The Eye of the Phoenix
by GrandSpaceWizard
Summary: Three years after the Battle of Hogwarts, a foolish Dark Wizard attempted to summon the power of an extradimensional entity without understanding the consequences, and the entire world paid the price. Desperate to save himself and his godson, Harry makes a bargain with a being of incredible power and escapes to another Earth, one with a fighting chance. Will he save it, or doom it?
1. 1: Darkness Falls

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

**…**

Harry Potter was not afraid of death, but he had hoped to meet a peaceful end after a long, happy life with a family of his own. Instead he'd been forced to watch as a cosmic abomination of unimaginable power swallowed his world and subjected its inhabitants to a fate far worse than death.

_Dormammu_.

Harry thought he'd seen true evil when his scar burned with pain and he looked into the dark hellscape that was Voldemort's mind, and while Tom Riddle had undeniably been the pinnacle of human vileness, even he paled in comparison to that… thing. Harry only knew its name because the entity had announced itself with prideful arrogance the instant it had been summoned into his dimension by a foolish dark wizard. The destruction and subsequent assimilation of his universe had not been instantaneous, but it had been very quick all the same.

Dormammu had been summoned at Stonehenge, a place steeped in magic and perfect for such rituals. The Dark Dimension had spread out rapidly from there, creating massive ripples of dark power that Harry sensed the way a crocodile detects moving prey in water. Overwhelmed and unable to muster up any thought more coherent than an absolute certainty that he was about to suffer a fate worse than death, he'd reacted on instinct and with a desperation that dwarfed anything he'd felt during the war.

He'd cast out with magic and Legilimency, sending out a call for help that rippled across dimensions. The strain of sending the message very nearly killed him and he doubted anything would answer it, but as it turned out something had been listening. The Dark Dimension was seconds away from consuming him when time slowed to a crawl.

As the world around him dissolved into darkness and sinister, multi-colored auras, a humanoid outline of crimson and gold flames appeared before him. "Hello, Harry," it said.

Harry stared. "Who are you?" he found himself asking. The ghostly fire form seemed to brighten, but Harry didn't look, squint, or blink.

"I am the one who holds the power. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end." The fiery being's voice was unlike any Harry had ever heard before. As a wizard he was no stranger to unusual voices, but this took it to another level, as though fire had somehow learned to speak. The voice crackled and billowed, the words echoing with power. As well, it was impossible to assign a gender to the voice. The pitch seemed to fluctuate ever so slightly with each syllable, creating a tenor unlike any he'd ever encountered.

"Do you have a name?" Harry asked.

The being seemed to brighten for a moment. "I have been called many things. Balance, Destruction, the Original One, the Spark that Gave Life to the Universe, the One Who Sings the Endsong. But the name I prefer, the one I go by when I walk the mortal world is… _Phoenix_. I sired the magical firebirds that share that name."

Harry considered that. "Why are you here?" he said after a moment.

"I have watched you for a long time, Harry Potter," the being said. "From the moment your mother gave her life to save yours you have been of interest to me. Since then you have grown in body, mind, magic, and spirit. I never interfered on your behalf, but I watched, and I considered." Before Harry could even form a response to that it spoke again. "You called for help and I have answered. What do you want, Harry Potter?"

Harry licked his lips. His throat suddenly felt very dry, and he was certain his difficulty breathing had nothing to do with how time had slowed. He glanced behind him at the small bed where little Teddy was frozen in mid sit-up, confusion and fear written on his tiny face. Harry's godson had only just turned three and was spending the night at his house. "I want," Harry said carefully, turning to look at the fiery form that stood between him and the encroaching darkness, "to save my godson. I want him to live the life he chooses, away from the horrors I've endured, safe from whatever that," he indicated the darkness, "is."

The fire being nodded. "I can give you the power to make that happen."

Harry found that he wasn't surprised by this. "What's the catch?" was all he said.

"There is no catch. You are worthy of my power. You are the perfect vessel, if you can control it. Can you control it, Harry Potter?"

"I doubt it. But I have to try."

The fire being nodded again and held out its right arm, revealing a detailed human figure sculpted from ghostly fire. "Take my hand."

Harry stared at the hand for a long moment. Then he glanced from the hand to Teddy and back again. Moody would have killed him for being so reckless, but what other choice was there? He closed his eyes. He took the offered hand.

And something vast, powerful, so _unimaginably_ powerful, invaded his body and swept through his entire being. His mind, his very soul, were fused with a fire so bright that to call it hot was to call an ocean a puddle. It drove all rational thought from his mind with the sheer force of its presence. He reacted on instinct. The darkness swallowed everything, the fire consumed the darkness, and the world vanished.

...

In a hidden research station tucked within the depths of the Antarctic ice, not far from the south pole of another version of Earth, alarms began to ring. Sensor detected massive amounts of electromagnetic energy flowing across the entire planet. Cell phones and other wireless communication devices went berserk, and power grids worldwide flickered. The northern Aurora Borealis appeared as far south as New York City, and their Southern counterparts were visible in Sydney, Australia.

The SHIELD Helicarrier off the coast of Maine lost ten feet of altitude in as many seconds before the initial disturbance subsided, but Nick Fury still ordered the pilots to set down in deep water away from the shipping lanes. His scientists scrambled to locate the source of the energy wave, but their sensors failed to pinpoint anything more than the fact that it originated somewhere in the eastern half of the northern hemisphere. At the secret Dark Energy Research Facility in New Mexico's Sonoran Desert, the Tesseract flared, unleashing a blue surge of energy that fried everything within twenty feet and melted its container. By some miracle, no one was hurt.

...

In a darkened chamber of the Kamar-Taj compound in Kathmandu, a Celtic woman so old she'd forgotten her own name, though she did not look it, staggered away from the Eye of Agamotto, her mind overcome with visions of fire and light, screams and birdsong. By the time Karl Mordo found her she lay unconscious on the floor, the Eye beside her. She awoke three hours later in the infirmary, though it was found that nothing was actually wrong with her. Afterwards, however, Mordo could not help but notice how disturbed the Ancient One was by whatever she had seen.

The Ancient One, for her part, spent hours upon hours of the following days in the library, until at least she found what she'd seen in her visions. A detailed history of the formation of the omniverse, and the cosmic entity that safeguarded the infinite universes that compromised it. A vast, amorphous firebird. A humanoid figure stood at its heart.

...

On Asgard, Heimdall turned away from the Bifrost gateway and strode out of his observatory at a fast clip, heading straight for the Royal Palace. The Allfather had almost certainly sensed it as well, but it would still be prudent to discuss the matter in private. The Phoenix Force had returned, and it had already chosen a host. _May the Norns have mercy on us_, he thought.


	2. 2: Arrival

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

**…**

_Scilly Isles, Great Britain, April of 2001_

Harry felt warm air blow over his face. He seemed to be lying on a hard, rough surface, judging from the killer ache in his back and his head. A musty smell filled his nostrils, which didn't help his dizziness. Why was he dizzy if he was on his back? He tried to move, to open his eyes, but found that he couldn't. He felt tired and sluggish, as though he'd run a marathon. It took him a moment to remember where he was and what had happened. Then it all came rushing back in a torrent of vivid memories.

The darkness. Dormammu. The fiery entity. Teddy… _Teddy_!

Adrenaline surged through Harry's veins and he sprang up, glancing about frantically. The dizziness faded. He was still in Teddy's room at Potter Manor, as far as he could tell, but something was wrong. Yes, there were the same sky-blue walls, only the paint had cracked and faded, leaving the bare stone walls exposed. The same cradle-bed where Teddy now lay sleeping peacefully was there too, but the wood looked decayed, the sheets and pillows ratty and frayed. The soft carpet floors were gone too. Looking out the window he saw that the glass was cracked and dull, but the same view was still visible; the blue waters of the North Atlantic surrounding a green landmass with white sand beaches, with several neighbors on the horizon. The sun shone brightly, the source of the warm light that had woken him.

Potter Manor had been built in the Scilly Islands, a British territory southwest of Cornwall. His parents had moved here just after his grandparents died only to leave the prominent home behind when they learned of the prophecy, a month before Harry was born. They'd hidden in Godric's Hollow under various protective spells, but they'd been found within six months. They'd changed hiding places three more times before returning to the cottage where he was born, intending to rely on the Fidelius Charm. They'd been betrayed within a week…

Harry hastened to Teddy's now decrepit bed and scooped the toddler into his arms, checking for signs of injury or distress. Aside from his hair turning white, however, which Harry recognized as the young metamorph's universal signal of displeased surprise, he looked perfectly fine. After a few minutes Teddy's hair began to fade to the mousy brown that was its default, and Harry reluctantly set him down so as to examine himself. The fake Moody in his fourth year had once told him that it was always wise to examine your own appearance if you woke up in an unfamiliar location and weren't sure how you got there, because it was the easiest way to determine whether you were in possession of all your faculties. It struck Harry as an odd lesson at the time, but his experiences during the war had shown him it was a good rule of thumb.

Potter men, he knew, did not shoot up in height until their late teens, as had been the case with both him and his father, but Harry had been much too scrawny for most of his Hogwarts years. During his sixth year he'd secretly used the heavily modified recipes in his graffitied copy of Advanced Potion Making to brew himself a course of corrective potions that had cured him of the lingering effects of his upbringing with the Dursleys (Snape's portrait had smirked at him when he thanked it in lieu of the dead professor). After the war ended Harry had gone into the Muggle world and had his eyesight corrected by laser surgery. He'd also taken to working out and learning magical martial arts from Asian masters.

Now Harry stood at 6 feet tall and weighed 180 lbs, built rather like a swimmer, similar to how Remus had looked. The mess that was his jet-black hair now appeared more artfully disheveled than ratty, and he'd been told that his emerald green eyes had a piercing quality to them, not unlike Dumbledore's. His determination to stay fit had resulted in a respectably toned, muscular body, but the various scars he'd accumulated throughout the war resisted all attempts to heal them, since they'd been inflicted by dark magic, so he relied on glamour charms only he could see through to avoid drawing attention to them outside the wizarding world.

He wasn't a bodybuilder, but more than one muggle had offered him a position as a photography model, though he'd declined every time. He'd had quite enough of people ogling him in person, thank you very much. Pictures of him that would wind up on display in clothing stores where anyone could see them? Forget it.

As he examined himself, Harry realized at once that the surroundings weren't the only thing that had changed. As he clenched his right hand he found to his surprise that the scar of I must not tell lies was gone. Not concealed by his glamour, but replaced with smooth and undamaged skin, as though he were a newborn baby. Almost on reflex he checked his other hand and found that it too was unblemished. Harry whirled around and dashed for the nearest bathroom. The wooden door, he noticed, was decayed and creaked loudly on its hinges. The bathroom looked as though it hadn't been updated at all in the last century. Staring into the cracked mirror Harry took in his own slightly disheveled appearance. Pulling his shirt off, he saw that the glamours he wore on a daily basis were gone. Instead of scars, however, he saw healthy, undamaged skin.

The burn over his heart inflicted by the locket Horcrux? Gone. The snake bite from Nagini? Vanished. The spot on his right arm where he'd been stabbed by the basilisk fang? Like it never even happened. In fact, it looked as though he'd been cleansed of the remnants of every single injury he'd ever endured, right down to his broken nose from all the times Dudley had punched him in the face.

Well, almost all of them. Only one mark remained.

Harry supposed it was rather petty of him to get upset over it. The lightning bolt scar left behind by Voldemort's failed Killing Curse was the one injury he'd been the most desperate to get rid of, yet not even absorbing an incomprehensibly powerful cosmic entity and transporting himself through space and time to who knew where had done the trick. Perhaps if he'd had better control of the power?... The scar had once been dark red, as though the cut was infected, which he supposed it had been. After the destruction of the soul shard within it had faded to a soft, burnt pink like a normal scar. Now it was pure white and thinner than ever, so that it was almost invisible against his light complexion, especially from a distance. That at least, he had to admit, was an improvement. Harry studied his reflection for a moment longer and noticed a healthy glow in his skin that hadn't been there before. He felt… renewed.

Satisfied, Harry put his shirt back on and went back to Teddy's room. Leaning over the toddler's bed, he saw that his godson was beginning to stir. Teddy had his mother's heart shaped face and his father's honey brown eyes and mousy hair, but he changed the colors with his metamorphosing so often that they were usually only visible when he slept.

From what Harry had read about metamorphmagi, they gained control of their shapeshifting abilities as they aged in the same way that all human children learned to speak. As newborns the ability was completely uncontrollable, and they changed appearance constantly. As they grew up their hair and eye color would shift based on mood or the appearance of the person who held their attention, though the meaning of each color varied between individuals. By the age of seven they could switch between colors and make minor adjustments to at will. Most metamorphmagi could make themselves look however they wanted by age eleven, though maintaining an altered appearance was still difficult. The ability refined itself further throughout adolescence until they had full control over every aspect of their appearance, save their age. However, control could be completely lost when they experienced powerful or turbulent emotions. Harry remembered all too well how Tonks had been affected by her attraction to Remus and his initial refusal to be with her because of his condition, and she was an adult who'd already mastered her powers.

Harry flicked his arm, summoning his wand from its undetectable holster, and prepared to cast a few diagnostic spells to make sure all was truly well. That was when he noticed something that made him stop cold. The wand in his hand did not feel as warm and familiar as it should have. Instead it felt, there was no other word for it, scared. It took Harry a moment to realize why.

It was only after Voldemort's final defeat that Harry realized just how debilitating the soul fragment in his scar had been. It was like having a metal spike stuck in his head, and he'd lived with the pressure so long that he didn't know how painful it was until it had gone. He'd been able to think more clearly than before, and magic had become much easier. With that clarity came an improved ability to control his emotions, which made it easier for him to learn Occlumency. He no longer had to worry about trips into Voldemort's head, but that didn't change the fact that he was privy to sensitive information a Legilimens could pry from his mind. That didn't mean that Occlumency was suddenly easy though; on the contrary, his shields were the product of years of hard work. He'd also gained a burning new desire to master magic. Before, he had nothing but Voldemort in his future, and he hadn't expected to survive into adulthood. With the threat of the dark lord gone he was free to pursue his dreams and be who he wanted to be.

Examining his own magic with his improved senses, Harry noticed right away that something had changed. Drastically. In his studies, Harry had found he had a particular talent for fire magic, but that didn't account for the blazing fireball that appeared in his mind's eye. Where before he perceived his magic as a green and gold aura of warm light, he now saw a miniature sun. There was so much energy flowing through him it was a wonder he didn't spontaneously combust with it. He knew with utter certainty that if he tried to use a wand, the power would overwhelm and destroy it. Harry exited the self-examination trance and eyed his wand. It had been broken once before, and it had felt like losing a friend, or a limb. He would not let that happen again, even if it was now unusable.

Returning the wand to its holster, Harry raised his right hand and made a complicated little motion with his fingers. This type of magic was the easiest to perform wandlessly, after all. An aura of golden light swept its way over Teddy like a radar scanner, and Harry was relieved to find that nothing was highlighted. His godson was perfectly healthy. Never before had wandless magic been so easy, and he distinctly remembered that particular spell producing blue light...

Teddy opened his eyes, which almost instantly turned to the exact shade of green as Harry's, while his hair turned black. In spite of everything, that made Harry smile slightly. "Hawy?" Teddy murmured.

"Morning, Teddy," Harry said quietly. He had no idea what time it was, so it was entirely possible that it wasn't morning at all. For all he knew, this version of Earth, for he had no doubt that he'd brought himself and Teddy into a parallel dimension, was a nightmare-scenario ruled by a dystopian government. With his luck…

"Wha happened? Why was it dawk?"

Harry's heart sank. Teddy had woken up a second or two before the Phoenix entity appeared, which meant that he'd glimpsed the encroaching power of Dormammu. It would have been so much easier if Teddy hadn't remembered. Better to save that conversation for when he was older. "I don't know," he hedged.

Teddy looked unconvinced, so Harry hastily changed the subject, scooping the toddler into his arms and leaving the room. Three-year-olds, even three-year-olds capable of forming complete sentences, where easily distracted. Teddy was immediately curious as to why the house was suddenly decrepit, but Harry was saved the effort of explaining that when he got them outside. Teddy wandered about in the slightly overgrown grass of the front lawn, quickly going into self-entertainment mode. Harry was reluctant to test his suddenly super-easy wandless magic on his godson, but he couldn't let him wander around unsupervised. At the same time, he had to take stock of their surroundings.

Harry knew that the real reason wandless magic was so difficult was because one had to concentrate the energy for the spell through sheer force of will, without the aid of a wand to focus the spell into the desired shape and location. That led to slower and less efficient spellcasting, and complex curses with specific effects, like the nasty purple one Dolohov had used to kill Remus, simply would not work. Still, it looked as though wandless magic was his only option now. After a moment's consideration, Harry decided that recon could wait.

He spent the next few hours entertaining Teddy, deliberately exhausting him. It wasn't easy, since Teddy was an energetic toddler, but Harry managed. Once Teddy started complaining, he knew he'd done enough. Harry reached beneath the collar of his shirt and pulled out his mokeskin pouch, a birthday gift from Hagrid. Reaching inside he pulled out a shrunken trunk, set it on the ground, and muttered a command word. Instantly the trunk expanded to full size. Harry touched the keyhole with the tip of a finger, and the lock clicked open.

A Summoning Charm ought to be safe enough. Sure enough, when Harry used the spell his tent shot out of the bottomless trunk and into his arms. Laying it out on the ground, he pulled a curious Teddy away and muttered "_Erecto_." Instantly the tent sprang up and assembled itself. It looked barely large enough for two people, but when Harry led Teddy inside they walked into a spacious apartment with cloth walls and comfortable furniture.

First order of business: food. Harry had become rather paranoid about the possibility that he'd have to go on the run after the Battle of Hogwarts, so he, Ron, and Hermione had together purchased and enchanted trunks and tents that would be the ultimate survival tools. Granted, Hermione had done most of the enchantments, but Harry helped where he could. A few ingredients summoned from his trunk (thank Merlin for preservation charms) and fiddling with the stove later he'd cooked up a modest meal for himself and his godson. When they finished, Teddy's eyes began to droop. Harry led him to bed and read him to sleep.

When he walked outside the tent, Harry noticed that the sun was getting lower in the sky. He was tired and relying entirely on Occlumency to keep his emotions in check, but he still had work to do. He spent the next few hours testing his altered magic. He'd never attempted to create protective wards without a wand, and by all rights he should not have been able to. Yet, impossibly, it only took an hour or so of practice to figure out how to cast wandless versions of the spells he needed. Eventually he managed to wrap the tent in a veil of silence, camouflaged it, and covered the space around it in a defensive barrier.

Once he was finished, night had fallen, revealing that it was a waning crescent moon. That was fortunate, since Teddy was physically unable to sleep during the full moon. That odd quirk, along with the superior senses of a wolf, were the only side effects of having a werewolf father, for which Harry was extremely grateful. He walked back inside the tent, collapsed into his own bed without changing, and relinquished his Occlumency.

The gravity of his situation crashed down on him, and grief clenched his heart. His entire world was dead, or worse. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Hagrid, Ginny, and everyone else who had survived the war against Voldemort, along with the rest of the planet, the entire dimension, all gone. Harry buried his face in his pillows and began to weep.

...

Heimdall watched the Phoenix host struggle to secure himself on Midgard. The young man seemed to have the gift of magic, and the Phoenix Force had altered and strengthened it. Interestingly, the host had a young child with shapeshifting abilities, though Heimdall had the impression they weren't actually related by blood. Odin had tasked him with watching the Phoenix's Chosen One and getting his measure. Asgard would not interfere unless it was absolutely necessary to do so. Heimdall could sense that the host was not native to this reality. He was lost with a child and new powers he did not fully understand, grieving for a lost world. He was tempted to use the Bifrost to bring them to Asgard, but he didn't think the host would appreciate that just now.

...

_Kamar-Taj Compound, Kathmandu, Nepal, April of 2001_

The Ancient One surfaced from the Eye of Agamotto, shaking her head to dispel lingering visions of the future. His mere presence had upset the timeline , and certain possibilities that would not come for years yet had been accelerated, while others had been erased and replaced by new ones. Nearly a week had passed since the Phoenix Force's Chosen One arrived in this dimension, but the strain of the journey had rendered him and his progeny comatose until now. This was the first time since their arrival that she'd dared use the Eye to look into possible futures. What she'd seen filled her with terror and hope in equal measure. One thing was certain; the Phoenix host was a fundamentally good man, but he was hurting deeply. He had lost everything and had a young child to care for. He needed her help just as badly as she needed his.

She replaced the Eye of Agamotto on its pedestal, sent word to Masters Mordo and Hamir that she was leaving, and donned her Sling Ring. Taking a deep breath, her thoughts set swirling by what she was about to do, she conjured a portal to the Scilly Islands and stepped through. Slowly.


	3. 3: The Beginning

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

**…**

_Scilly Isles, Great Britain, April of 2001_

The Ancient One stood on a grassy plateau. Night had fallen, so she applied a dark-vision spell to her eyes, and suddenly she could see as well as she could in daylight. To her right the land sloped downward towards a white sand beach and crystalline blue water. To her left rose the remains of what had once been a handsome manor house. In its heyday she guessed that it would have been at least fifty feet tall, with four floors, several small towers, and had no less than half a dozen chimneys. Now however, the mansion was clearly abandoned. Ivy grew over its stone walls, which had cracked in several places, and most of the windows were broken. The roof was a mess of missing tiles that revealed decaying support beams underneath. The front drive was so overgrown it might have been mistaken for part of the lawn at first glance, and a crumbling fountain rose forlornly out of the foliage.

The Ancient One made her way carefully to the decayed front doors and slipped inside. The stone floor of the main atrium was cracked and chipped, and one of the twin staircases on either side of the room had collapsed, spreading rubble over nearly half the room. She could not repair the damage without the Time Stone, and she had a feeling that such an act would not endear her to the Phoenix host in any case. Instead, she cleaned up the mess with a few spells, filled the gaps in the walls and roof with wards against the elements, and conjured up a table and chairs for tea summoned from Kamar Taj.

As she finished, the Ancient One caught a whiff of smoke. Frowning, she turned and followed her nose through the remains of the front doors, and immediately ended her night vision spell. Twenty feet from the broken fountain, a ring of fire wide enough to encircle an articulated truck had appeared, burning the overgrown grass to a crisp and illuminating the entire facade of the mansion in all its decaying glory. In the center of the wall of flames sat an unassuming, one person tent. Reaching out with her senses, the Ancient one realized that the host had attempted to hide his tent behind protective spells and, unused to his new powers, had botched them. Fortunately, it seemed that the tent had been rendered fireproof by more reliable magic than that used for the wards, because the flames never touched it.

The Ancient One considered waiting for the host to notice the flames on his own, but decided that would be rather cruel. Cloaking herself in a fireproof shield, she stepped through the flames and conjured a gavel and block, which she used to simulate knocking on a door. After a minute or two of waiting she tried again. A vague sound of acknowledgment issued from the tent flap.

The Ancient One stepped back, vanishing her conjured items. A moment later, the tent flap opened. A young man stood in the entrance, glaring at her. He was tall and very fit, with a light complexion, tousled black hair, and shocking green eyes, like glowing emeralds. He wore a casual black shirt and workout pants, which looked so rumpled she was sure he'd slept in them. Judging from the redness around his eyes he'd cried himself to sleep. She could hardly blame him. In her mind's eye he fairly glowed with power. "Your lawn is on fire," she informed him. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the crackling flames.

The man gaped at her. It was hard to tell what had surprised him more, the fire, her immunity to it, or her deadpan delivery. He closed his mouth and opened it again like a fish, then said "Thanks for telling me."

"You're welcome. You're probably wondering how I found your tent."

The man blinked and nodded, apparently deciding to forgo anger in favor of rankled curiosity. "Sort of. I mean, the fire made it rather obvious."

"Please, don't play dumb with me. You're not the only one around here who can use magic." Instantly the host's demeanor changed. His eyes narrowed, and he raised his hands, as though in defence. The message was clear. You make one wrong move and I'll make you regret it. The Ancient One's mild mannered expression didn't change. "I'm not here to harm you," she said.

"Do you honestly expect me to believe that? You removed my wards!"

"Actually, I didn't. When I arrived here they were working just fine, because I could not see anything of this tent. I went into the house, and when I came back out I found a fire with a tent at its heart. A tent that wasn't burning."

The host blinked. "You knew I was here, wards or no."

The Ancient One allowed a small smile. "Maybe. Can I offer you some tea?"

"You came here from who knows where and walked through a wall of fire to offer a complete stranger some tea?"

"Well, in truth I'm here to offer you help in adjusting to this dimension, because you sorely need it. The tea will just make the conversation more pleasant."

The man was gaping again. "How did you-"

"It's my job. You're not the first visitor from an alternate version of Earth I've encountered, and you won't be the last. I understand that your trust will be hard earned, especially since you have no reason to believe anything I tell you, but that won't stop me from trying. Until you've acclimated to this dimension, you are effectively my responsibility."

"I can respect that. How about we agree to be honest with each other?"

"Very well. I promise to never lie to you or willfully endanger you or your godson."

The Phoenix host looked shocked, but managed to say "I promise to never lie to you, and I will not harm you. Now tell me, how did you know-"

"I saw him in your future."

"My future?"

"How about we take this conversation inside the mansion. If it's any consolation, I don't know everything about you, only the important parts."

Harry reluctantly followed the strange woman outside. As he watched, she used odd hand gestures to summon rings and discs of runes constructed from fiery energy, none of which he recognized from Hermione's books. With a sweep of her arms and a wave of golden light she dispelled the fire. The demonstration of wandless magic was harda surprise, but the way she did it was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. As far as he knew, no one could create runic patterns in midair like that, not with his kind of magic.

The woman led him to the ruined mansion. She wore bright yellow robes that shone like gold. She was pale and bald, but her grey eyes shone with the wisdom of great age. The way she'd looked at him was what convinced him to trust her. There was no malice in her gaze, but there was a wariness that reminded him of Moody, as though she'd seen too much to be completely trusting of everyone she met. On the other hand, there was genuine kindness in her eyes, the sort of look that said I know you're suffering and I want to help, if only you'd allow me. He'd seen that look on Professor Mcgonagall's face after Dumbledore's death.

The woman in yellow had obviously prepared for this meeting beforehand, because there was a table and chairs in the center of the entrance hall. The rubble and dust had been cleared away, and Harry saw faint shimmers of magic in the various holes in the building, keeping out the elements. The woman gestured for him to sit in one of the chairs, and he did so slowly, still wary. The seat was surprisingly comfortable given that it was made entirely out of wood, and he watched as she poured tea and took the chair opposite him. She drank readily, and after a moment's hesitation, Harry followed suit. "This is good tea!" he exclaimed happily.

The woman smiled. "It is, isn't it. Fresh leaves are the key."

"No doubt," Harry replied, taking another sip. "I never got your name."

"And I never had yours. In truth, I have forgotten my name." At Harry's disbelieving expression she smiled and added "I am much older than I look. I answer to 'The Ancient One'."  
"The Ancient One?" Harry said, bemused. Well, considering the names that were thrown around in the wizarding world back home, he could hardly judge her (cough, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, cough). "Well," he continued, "You certainly don't look that old. My name is Harry, Harry Potter."

"Harry Potter," she mused. "That has a nice ring to it."  
Harry smiled faintly. "So, you said you wanted to help me. How? And why?"

She nodded. "As I said, it's my job. I am the Sorceress Supreme, the Earth's first line of defense against mystical and extradimensional threats."

Too bad we didn't have someone like her around back home, Harry thought. "Sorceress Supreme, eh? Sounds rather magnanimous."

"I suppose it does, but it's no exaggeration. I lead an order of Sorcerers, the Masters of the Mystic Arts. Our magic is quite different from yours."

"I was wondering about that. Perhaps you can teach me. Right now my own magic is almost useless. You saw what happened to my wards outside."

"In due time. But first you need to understand your new power and the dangers it brings."

"The power of the Phoenix."

"Precisely. The Phoenix Force is a fundamental part of the omniverse, and you are now the host for a fragment of its power."

"The omniverse? I don't understand."

The Ancient One took one last sip of her tea and rose. With a gesture of her hands, she conjured a three-dimensional holographic image of the Earth above the tabletop. Alongside it were several near-identical images, though these grew fainter the further they were from the one in the middle until they faded to nothing. "Our universe is just one of an infinite number comprising a vast multiverse," she explained. "In turn there are an infinite number of multiverses that together comprise the omniverse. My kind of magic is rooted in the art of drawing power from alternate dimensions to circumvent the limitations of normal physics. Some of these parallel worlds are nurturing havens for life, while others are dark places where threats older than time lie in waiting, ravenous and evil."

She highlighted the most corporeal image of the Earth with an orange aura. "This is the version of planet Earth found in my dimension, the one you now find yourself in. This one," she highlighted the one adjacent to it in green, "was your home dimension before it was devoured by Dormammu."

At the name Dormammu Harry sat up, his eyes narrowed. "You know of him?"

"Dormammu is the greatest threat faced by the Masters of the Mystic Arts, the most powerful extradimensional threat we've ever encountered. A cosmic conqueror with virtually unlimited power and hunger to match. When a new dimension captures his attention, he invades and devours it, subsuming everything into his Dark Dimension. It is a place beyond time and beyond death as we understand it. Those who pledge allegiance to him gain eternal life, and eternal torment along with it. All others are destroyed. His goal is to devour the entire multiverse, and he hungers for Earth most of all."

"Why Earth?" Harry asked, trying not shudder at the horrible idea of Dormammu and the Dark Dimension.

The Ancient One sighed. "Earth is a unique world. It is the only planet that exists simultaneously in every dimension of the universe, which makes it an ideal crossroads for interdimensional travel. Every time Dormammu devours a version of this planet, it provides him with easy access to hundreds of other universes. Your universe and its timelines were distinguished by the Phoenix Force's interest in you. By devouring that single version of Earth, Dormammu has also devoured its possibilities. Every timeline, every alternate chain of events, every version of you that attracted the Phoenix's attention without actually meeting it, belongs to him now."

She highlighted one of the alternate Earth's in green. As Harry watched, a sinister purple aura erupted from its version of the United Kingdom and spread to cover the entire planet. He knew instinctively that this was his own Earth and swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. "So this Dormammu destroyed my world, and its your job to stop him from doing the same to this world," he said a bit shakily. "What about the Phoenix Force? Why did it offer me its power, and how did that save me?"

The Ancient One changed the hologram. The alternate Earths became glowing spheres, each composed of hundreds of smaller black spheres filled with stars. "These are multiverses. The balance between them is essential to their continued existence. If any one multiverse were to grow to large or become too small, or encroach upon its neighbors, the resulting chain reaction would destroy everything. This essential balance is maintained by the cosmic entity known as the Living Tribunal, which is powerful enough to make Dormammu look like a small firecracker by comparison. Within each multiverse, a similar balance must be maintained between universes.

"Responsibility for maintaining that balance and preserving as many universes as possible lies with the Tribunal's only equal, the Phoenix Force. It has split itself between universes, like an organism that has scattered its cells across the cosmos. Each sliver of the Phoenix Force monitors its own designated area of responsibility. When it detects a threat to the balance of life, the local fragment of the Phoenix Force seeks a sentient life form to serve as its host, a vessel capable of directing its immense power and ending the threat. If the damage can be healed, the Phoenix will heal it. If not, the threat is burned out of existence. You could think of it cosmic trauma surgeon or as a guardian; both interpretations are correct. For whatever reason, our local representation of the Phoenix Force decided the time has come for it to directly intervene and has chosen you as its host."

Harry felt a headache coming on and put his head in his hands Why did everything happen to him? Why did he have to become famous for not dying when his parents did? Why did he have to be the wizarding world's chew toy, going from saviour to scapegoat and back again? Why did he have to be the bloody Chosen One? Why did a bloody _cosmic entity_ have to devour his world and strand him and his godson in a new world where they didn't belong? And why did the very thing that allowed them to survive have to be a freaking _fundamental force of the omniverse_?! He robotically took another sip of tea, only to find that it had gone cold. He almost cast a warming charm, but stopped himself, remembering the rather spectacular failure of his wards.

"So does that make me some kind of Chosen One?" he asked bitterly.

"In a way," the Ancient One said. There was no pity in her voice, but her tone was kind. That made Harry glad. He didn't want her pity, or anyone else's. What he wanted was a normal life (or as normal as a wizard could hope for) where he was free to be himself and to have a family of his own. Was that too much to ask? Hadn't he sacrificed enough for the sake of others?

"I know you didn't ask for this," the Ancient Once continued, "but there is nothing I can do to change it. This is your burden."

"That's hardly fair."

"You of all people should know that life isn't fair. You bear a burden even I would hesitate to accept when all you want is what most people take for granted. I understand. I'd give anything just to remember my own name. But I can't, even with my ability to peer through time."

Harry looked up at her. Her grey eyes reminded him so much of Professor Mcgonagall it made his heart ache. "Can you help me master this power?" he asked.

"I can help you acclimate to this dimension. I can even help you and your godson integrate into society unnoticed. But in the end it is you who must find the best way to master the power of the Phoenix. All can I do for you on that front is point you in the right direction. As I said, it's your burden."

Harry looked up at her. She held out a hand, and Harry was reminded of the Phoenix Force appearing to him in Teddy's room as it should have been, offering him the power to achieve his heart's desire. He had trusted the mysterious entity blindly, and look where that got him. But he'd had no other options at the time. Now he found himself in the same situation; desperate and with no other choice. There was a chance the Ancient One was lying to him and that this was all a ruse, but something made him doubt that. He glanced in the direction of the front door to the mansion and his tent, then back at the Ancient One. He studied her deceptively delicate hand for a long moment, then took it.

"I have one more question," he said as she pulled him to his feet.

She raised an eyebrow.

"How can you see into the future?"

She smiled. "I'll show you."

...

_Kamar-Taj, Kathmandu, Nepal, April of 2001_

Karl Mordo heard a faint crackling sound and turned to see a sling ring portal open near a parapet of Kamar Taj's darkened main training ground. The Ancient One stepped through, illuminated by the fiery sparks of the portal, followed closely by a tall young man with messy black hair and bright green eyes. The man held a child in his arms, a little boy with electric blue hair that had Mordo doing a double take to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. The child gave a huge yawn, and his hair turned mousy brown. Mordo supposed he'd seen stranger things, so he didn't question it. As he watched, the Ancient One dispelled the portal and led her guest inside.


	4. 4: Changed and Unchanged

**No, I am not dead.**

**To those kind souls who have complimented, followed, favorited, and reviewed this W.I.P. fic and/or asked for updates, I say thank you and offer you an apology. Shortly after I began working on this story, my first ever piece of published fanfiction, I went on vacation and returned home only a day before I moved to a college campus. Since then I have been extremely busy with schoolwork, so fanfiction naturally took a backseat on the priority list.**

**I plan to update again during the Christmas holidays, hopefully without any other craziness getting in the way.**

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. Trolls are not.**

**…**

_Kamar-Taj Compound, Kathmandu, Nepal, August of 2001_

From his golden observatory on Asgard Heimdall watched the Phoenix host acclimate himself to his new home with what passed for avid interest by the all-seeing gatekeeper's standards.

Harry Potter, as the host was known, wasn't quite like any being Heimdall had ever observed personally. The Ancient One had personally recruited him from his initial point of arrival in the British Isles, and he'd brought along a young child, a boy no older than three. At first, Potter had been extremely overprotective of the child, as though he were afraid that someone would kidnap him. Potter had also displayed obvious symptoms of what the humans call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He was moody and irritable, especially during his first few days at the compound, he responded to such innocuous things as darkened rooms and sudden changes in lighting as though they were threats to his life, he often used excessive force in combat training exercises, and the only thing that ever made him smile was his godson. Even then, however, there was a deadened, haunted look in his eyes. This was no surprise, given his apparent status as a refugee from a dimension devoured by Dormammu.

The Ancient One took him on as her personal apprentice, something she hadn't done since Kaecilius, who in turn had been the first in decades. Potter was eager to learn, but it quickly became apparent that the usual methods would not suffice with him. Normal sorcerers learned to summon power from external sources and combine it with the source code of reality to create their own magic. Harry's magic, however, came from within. From what Heimdall understood, Potter had been born to magic, making it an integral part of who he was, which meant that it was tied to his emotions and could act of its own accord. This was made rather jarringly clear when one of his sparring partners used a spell that drained all light from the surroundings to blind him. Unsurprisingly, the spell had triggered Potter's... PTSD?, and the ensuing explosion of fire and telekinetic power had temporarily blinded everyone present and sent his opponent to the infirmary.

After that everyone at Kamar Taj learned to tread on eggshells around Potter. The higher-ranking masters were particularly wary of him, and his only friends seemed to be one Karl Mordo and the Ancient One herself. However, there was no question that she was his teacher first and foremost. After the incident with the darkness spell she'd taken him to task, given him an impromptu therapy session over tea, and taught him a meditation technique that aided him in controlling his emotional responses. Since then, Potter had mellowed, but Heimdall had a feeling Potter's self-control was still shaky. One misstep, one threat to his child, might be just what it took to set him off again. If he became the Dark Phoenix… Well, the Allfather was getting older, and there was no guarantee he'd survive such a fight a second time.

...

Harry sat in a lotus position appropriate for meditation, eyes closed, arms spread out to either side of him, hands open as though reaching for something, basking in the warmth of the sunlight streaming through his window. Around him floated a swarm of objects. There were books, some closed and some open, their pages flipping rapidly. There were articles of clothing, bills of currency darting in and out of a wallet, the Potter family Signet Ring, pieces of a chess set, a watch with stars and moons instead of numbers, and children's toys that clicked, squeaked, and popped. A few corked vials of brightly colored liquid orbiting an upturned end table with its drawer open completed the picture.

In his mind he saw nothing but a spark of golden fire, into which he poured all his emotions. His grief over everyone he'd lost, first in the war against Voldemort and then to Dormammu, then his guilt over getting Cedric and Sirius killed, the trauma of his torture at Voldemort's cruel hands. Next went his lingering anger at the wizarding community for using him as its proverbial chew toy, his lingering melancholy from growing up as an orphan, and finally his veritable ocean of survivor's guilt, all burned away. Calm and clear-headed, his mind was a logical machine, devoid of the uncontrolled emotions which had so often gotten him into trouble growing up.

What he would have given to have a normal life, where he could express himself without the risk of causing mass destruction… No, his fear of his own power did not matter, not right now. He fed it to the flame.

Since absorbing the Phoenix Force, or at least a portion of it, Harry had found that his powers were more deeply tied to his emotions than ever. In the past his magic only lashed out of its own accord when he was exceptionally angry or afraid. Now, however, the more he felt, the more energy he unleashed, forcing him to exert a level of self-control that Snape would have been proud of. It was not total suppression of his emotions, for the Ancient One had cautioned that using that particular method was unhealthy and unreliable in the long run. Instead, the goal was to prevent his emotions from growing too powerful to control by routinely "sluffing off the excess," as she put it. He could afford to get moderately angry and laugh, but he could not afford to completely lose his temper or surrender to hysterical amusement.

Under normal conditions standard Occlumency practices would have sufficed to maintain his self-control, but the Phoenix Force had eroded them to the point of near uselessness. It was a primal force of nature that could not handle human emotions. When it felt his joy, it too would be overjoyed, and its overwhelming happiness would feed his own until he blissed out and burst into flames. Conversely, if he got angry, it would mirror his anger and amplify it until he had to actively restrain himself from killing or maiming the source of his ire. Harry's emotions fed his power, and his power fed his emotions; as one grew, so too did the other, creating a vicious cycle that would inevitably drive him insane if he did not learn to control it. As a result, he had been forced to practice this particularly rigorous form of meditation on a daily basis or risk accidentally blowing someone up every time he became frustrated or annoyed.

In addition to the necessity of controlling his emotions, the Phoenix Force had effectively mutated his magic, making it not only stronger but changing its very nature, rendering his original methods of spellcasting useless. Instead of simply being naturally gifted with the ability to use magic, he now seemed to have a direct control over magic itself in its purest form. As a result, he could not use the Mystic Arts the same way the other sorcerers could. Their spells summoned external sources of mystical power, but Harry was a source of mystical power, which had led to rather… interesting accidents, some more dangerous than others. And he still couldn't use his wand. Indeed, he couldn't use any sort of magical focus without risk of damaging it.

The techniques the Masters of the Mystic Arts used to shape their spells proved a boon to his efforts to relearn magic. While the standard eldritch spells were useless to him, he could adapt the casting techniques to his own magic, turning wandless magic from a difficult sub-skill into his bread and butter. The first spell he had (re)mastered was one of his personal favorites; _Lumos_. Where before he needed to wave a wand, now he could conjure a floating orb of warm light simply by pressing two of his fingertips to the tip of his thumb and pulling them apart as he spoke the incantation.

In accordance with the Phoenix's favored method of altering its environment, psionic applications of magic such as Legilimency and telekinesis were almost absurdly easy, requiring only exertions of Harry's will and simple hand gestures rather than actual spells. Closely followed in the 'easy' category was basic pyrokinetics. He could not create Fiendfyre or an eternal flame, but he could conjure and manipulate regular flames on a whim and without once saying _'Incendio_.'

But none of this brought him true peace of mind. He had read the stories of Phoenix hosts who had been driven mad by the power through no fault of their own and transformed into the Dark Phoenix. The last Dark Phoenix to appear in this dimension devoured the supermassive black hole that held an entire galaxy together before it was stopped. The Ancient One had very good reasons for keeping the firebird-shaped entity's presence inside Harry a secret. Only her second in command, Karl Mordo, and the Sanctum guardians in New York, London, and Hong Kong were in the know, though he was certain that others suspected.

Harry sat in meditation for exactly one hour, eyes closed. When that hour ended, his fingers twitched ever so slightly, and the mess of floating objects shifted.

The books closed and filed themselves into stacks, which turned on their sides and fitted themselves back into bookshelves of bedroom. The clothes, a motley assortment of shirts, pants, socks, and underwear, folded up and neatly arranged themselves within an open armoire, which promptly closed once they were all inside. The signet ring, wallet, and watch settled atop the dresser, while the toys sank into a storage chest, which then closed itself before sliding under the bed and out of sight. The potion vials, holdovers from Harry's trunk when he first arrived in this world, inserted themselves into the table's open drawer, which closed as soon as the last of them was secure.

When he opened his eyes to stand up, he found that he was floating three feet above his meditation mat, and he was so surprised he promptly dropped like a stone.

As he got to his feet, he found that his eyes were still gummy from sleep. He almost reached up to rub them, but the Phoenix seemed to offer an alternative. He hesitated, not trusting it, but there was no sensation of disproportionate irritation. After a moment, he surrendered to its suggestion and let it guide him. A surge of power directed at his eyes cleared his vision, and suddenly he truly saw the world before him. The dust motes drifting through beams of sunlight, the countless miniscule dents and abrasions in the wood and stone walls of his room, and colors more vibrant than he believed possible. This was new. This was wonderful. He blinked, and the energy receded, his vision diminishing to its usual level of sharpness, all traces of gumminess lost.

Smiling slightly, Harry opened his door and stepped outside, where he found Teddy waiting for him.

The Ancient One herself met them both in a sunlit common room on the eastern end of the compound with a cup of steaming tea. It had become a ritual for him; he had arrived in this dimension on a Sunday, and so every Sunday morning he had tea with his mentor. She intrigued him. Being far older than even Dumbledore and in possession of the Eye of Agamotto, and consequently far more powerful, she was often infuriatingly cryptic, but each of her deflections inevitably led him in the direction of something useful. She had been up front with him when he asked about the Phoenix Force, up to and including the risk of becoming the Dark Phoenix, and that alone earned her his trust. She had also warned him about the recent defection of Kaecilius and his zealots, who were convinced that summoning Dormammu into the world would give all of humanity immortality and had tried repeatedly to contact him. Dumbledore, he knew, would have withheld knowledge of such dangers out of a misguided sense of overprotectiveness, even if he had the best of intentions.

The Ancient One had also taken a shine to Teddy. While her subordinate Karl Mordo was his most frequent babysitter, she still spent time with the little boy and even provided him with enchanted toys of her own creation, which he loved. Now godfather and godson sat on large cushions opposite the old sorceress drinking hot tea and warm milk respectively.

"I've been meaning to ask," Harry said after a minute of silence. "How do I acquaint myself with this dimension? I mean, I've been relearning magic to control the… you know." He gestured vaguely at his chest. "But I can't spend all of my team cooped up in Kamar Taj or the Sanctums. And Teddy needs to grow up with children his age." He lowered his voice. "He's already lost so much. If we're going to live even a semblance of a normal life the authorities can't suspect a thing about where we came from."

The Ancient One nodded. "I was waiting for you to bring this up." She sipped the last of her tea and stood up. "Come with me." Harry scooped Teddy into his arms and followed her as she led them in the direction of the library. They moved through the stacks to a collection that took up an entire wing of the library and was filled with rack after rack of books, scrolls, and tablets. After searching one of the shelves, she pulled out four volumes of varying thickness and passed them to him. Telekinetically he held them level with his chest and shuffled through them. The thickest bore the title _Circa 2000: A Brief History of Civilization_, while the smallest was labeled _Starting Over: A Guide for Stranded Dimension Hoppers_. The others were _How Captain America Changed Everything_ and _The Truth of Asgard_.

Harry blinked at the latter two. _Who the hell is Captain America? Is there a Captain Britain, too? And I thought Asgard was a myth._ The Ancient One must have seen the incredulity in his face, judging from her Cheshire-cat grin. He stared at her. "After spending ten years in a secret society of magic users and traveling to a parallel universe nothing should really surprise me, but seriously? Asgard and the Norse Pantheon are real?"

"They are, though there is nothing truly divine about them in the way most people would assume when thinking of gods." she explained. "Divinity is a myth, but gods are not. Most major deities humanity has worshipped throughout history are real, though often grossly misunderstood by their adherents. The Asgardians are an alien civilization from another dimension who have advanced to the point that they make little to no distinction between magic and science. In fact, it was an Asgardian king who stopped the rampage of the last Dark Phoenix. The Olympians were of a similar nature, though admittedly less mature as a people. The Judaio-Christian God, known to us as Yahweh, is a powerful spirit who seeks to improve the lives of mortals, but he's not infallible. He told me as much the one time I ever spoke with him. The gods are not the supreme entities of the universe, however much some of them wish to be."

Harry stared at her, trying to wrap his head around the idea of most of humanity's gods being real. It was rather ironic, he thought, that a secret order of magic users had a better understanding of the gods than the very religions that worshipped them, especially since most monotheistic faiths had labeled magic as something to be mistrusted or suppressed. And the Ancient One had personally talked to _Yahweh_! The pope, if this dimension had one, would have been green with envy, Harry was sure. Teddy didn't seem to understand that the Ancient One had dramatically shifted his godfather's worldview as casually as one might say "I'm going to the grocery store." He merely clung tighter to Harry, his hair turning black and his eyes green.

"If all the different gods are real," Harry managed, "where do they come from? What is a god, really?"

The Ancient One's eyes twinkled. "Read and find out."

Harry pouted. He'd been doing quite a lot of reading these days. Hermione, he reflected sadly, would have been proud.

Hours later Harry put _Circa 2000_ down on an end table in his room and shook his head. On the surface, history in this world prior to the 1930s wasn't all that different from the history in his own world, at least on the mundane side of things. Indeed, there was no real great divergence in the timeline that he could discern until the rise of the Nazi deep science division HYDRA. Led by a madman named Johan Schmidt, aka the Red Skull, they had acquired an extremely powerful pseudo-magical artifact called the Tesseract and used it to create weapons of incredible power. They were stopped by an American super soldier of all things, operating under the callsign Captain America. It was a rather ridiculous name in his opinion, but then Harry had been known by such an absurd title as 'The Boy Who Lived' so he was in no position to judge.

A glance at his watch, a battered little thing that had once been Fabian Prewett's, and realized he'd been reading for nearly three hours. Getting to his feet made pain shoot through his legs. He ignored it and left the room, deciding he needed to spar to clear his thoughts. While he didn't exactly like hand to hand combat, he was pragmatic enough to understand it was necessary for him to learn it.

Harry soon found himself facing off against a fellow novice dressed in white robes. The man looked to be in his mid-thirties and sported a short beard across his face. A scar ran up from the top of his right eye and straight through his forehead, giving way to a lock of white hair that bisected his scalp. The man conjured a pair of war fans composed of eldritch energy, similar to the weapons favored by the Ancient One, and attacked.

Harry did not bother with weapons but encased his hands in a fiery orange-gold aura of magical energy that greatly enhanced his durability and striking power, allowing him to match the eldritch weapons of the sorcerers with ease. Harry had found his greatest asset in combat was his speed and agility, and so he focused on avoidance and evasion. When he could not dodge, he simply deflected each blow, redirecting the force of the attack away from himself.

Harry's bearded opponent grew increasingly frustrated. Soon the man was sweating, putting more and more power into each swing of the fans and gradually surrendering the precision and dexterity that was required to use his weapons to their full potential. As the assault hit a crescendo, Harry's opponent slashed both war fans horizontally from two directions like a pair of scissors. Instead of attempting to block or leap away from the attack, Harry ducked under the fans.

Then he took the fight to the bearded man.

In a blur of motion Harry jabbed his energy encased right hand, fingers first, straight into the man's exposed stomach. The man doubled over in pain, and Harry leapt upon and around him, moving like a circus acrobat. Again and again Harry stabbed out with his hands and fingers, striking pressure points with just enough force to stun rather than injure, paralyzing the man's arms and legs one by one until at last he crumpled to the floor of the sparring arena like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Harry stepped away from the man and breathed deeply to settle his nerves. He wasn't even winded by the spar, but the man he'd just defeated was gasping on the ground as he struggled to return sensation to his arms. Harry offered him a hand, and after a moment the man took it, groaning as Harry pulled him to his feet. "You alright there mate?" Harry asked.

The man nodded, and Harry helped him stumble to a bench, where he sat and began massaging his limbs. "Nice technique," the man wheezed.

"Thanks."

Harry sat with him until he was certain the man could walk again, then got to his feet in search of another partner. Eventually Master Minoru, who was visiting from the Hong Kong Sanctum, offered to test his skills. A pleasant looking Chinese woman with long black hair in a neat braid and dark eyes, Minoru was a head shorter than Harry and carried herself with palpable self-assurance. Harry wasn't entirely sure he should challenge a fully-fledged master even if it was only in hand to hand combat, but decided he'd just go with it. Since developing his new fighting style, he had yet to face someone who could give him a true challenge save the Ancient One and Karl Mordo, and he was eager to see how he fared against the local equivalent of a trained Auror.

They stood ten feet apart in the outdoor sparring arena. Minoru conjured war fans like the Ancient One as well, and Harry knew immediately that she was far more skilled with them than his previous opponent.

When they began to spar in earnest, she took full advantage of the large surface area of her weapons to deflect Harry's pressure point strikes and hinder his evasive maneuvers, something the novice hadn't been able to do. She didn't limit herself to simple war fans, either. When it suited her, she changed the shape of her weapons, turning them from fans to circular shields to narrow blades and back again when it suited her and kicking out with her powerful legs. Harry twisted and contorted his body, making full use of the speed and agility he'd been developing in his workouts to evade her attacks. Other times he caught or redirected her blows with his aura-infused hands and struck back with precise jabs, targeting her pressure points. Unlike the previous fight he alternated frequently between offense and defense; he could not afford to be cornered. Harry was good, but Minoru was better, however much it stung to admit it even to himself.

At one point Harry leaped over Minoru, spinning in midair to strike at her head with his open palm. She deflected the blow with her fan in a shower of sparks as he landed behind her in a crouch. It was time to change tactics. "_Ferrumus_" he muttered, pulling the palms of his hands apart. The spell conjured a katana sword between them. Made from the same fiery gold light he'd used earlier, the weapon looked as if it were made from glowing glass. Grasping it in his right hand, he slashed at Minoru, who was caught off guard and barely deflected his blow. Now Harry was fully on the offensive, attacking in seemingly random staccato sequences that were in fact calculated to split her attention and batter her defenses down like a battering ram on a castle gate. Minoru was likewise forced to step up her game, rapidly changing the shape of her weapons to accommodate the rapid changes in maneuvering space his assault created.

As Harry dodged a kick from Minoru that would have almost certainly broken his nose, he struck out at her exposed ankle in a with a chopping motion of his empty but glowing left hand. The blow didn't break any bones, but Minoru spun away and landed unsteadily just out of reach of Harry's blade, favoring her other leg. Pressing his advantage Harry attempted to strike out at Minoru's neck in such a way that the flat of his blade would be pressed against her shoulder, which would be checkmate due to the ease with which such a position would allow him to behead her. His blade flashed through the air only to stab through a raised war fan. Harry tried to wrench his weapon back, only to find that it was stuck uselessly in the fan. Minoru twisted her arm, and both conjured weapons flew away from their owners, dissolving in midair into a rain of sparks.

Minoru swung at him with her other fan, and Harry caught it between his glowing hands. Then, bending backwards and swinging his arms upward in an arc with all his strength, Harry dragged Minoru off the ground and tossed her over his head. Harry snapped upright and spun as she landed in a heap behind him, yelping in surprise. Wasting not a moment Harry conjured a second katana and rushed at Minoru, who leapt to her feet and conjured another fan. Harry orbited her, evading her retaliatory blow and placing the edge of his blade against her neck.

"Dead," he said triumphantly, breathing hard. He realized that he was sweating.

"So are you," Minoru said. Looking down, Harry saw that she'd somehow twisted her arm so that it was bent around her torso opposite his sword. In her hand the war fan had been compressed into a dagger shape and was positioned mere millimeters from his stomach. All she'd have to do to cut him open was straighten her arm. They stood there frozen for a moment, then simultaneously vanished their conjured weapons and stepped away from one another.

The sound of someone clapping their hands drew Harry's attention away from Minoru, and he realized for the first time that they had an audience. His scarred and bearded sparring partner was clapping, joined by Karl Mordo, Teddy, the Ancient One, and three apprentices in crimson robes. Harry felt his cheeks redden as he turned to look back at Master Minoru. She smiled at him and inclined her head. "Impressive," she said. "No novice has fought a master to a draw since I first arrived here."

"And when was that?" Harry asked, curious.

"About fifty years ago."

Harry blinked. Minoru looked to be in her late thirties at most. But then, he thought, magic users back home had aged slowly as well. Dumbledore had been 115 when he died, but if not for his long beard and hairdo he would have looked like a healthy septuagenarian. The Ancient One herself was at least 700 years old, but she looked strangely ageless.

"Well done," the ancient sorceress said, approaching. She leaned towards Minoru and they had a quick, whispered conversation. After a moment Minoru nodded and turned back to Harry.

"I look forward to sparring with you again, Mr. Potter," she said before turning to walk away.

"Your skills are progressing wonderfully. You actually managed to avoid sending someone to the infirmary this time," the Ancient One remarked, and Harry felt himself flush in slight embarrassment. "I think you're ready to study the sling ring."

Harry felt a thrill of excitement at that. As useful as apparition was, he had found himself falling in love with the concept of the sling ring. For one thing, there were no distance limitations; if you could picture the destination in your mind you could go there. For another, using the portals once they were opened was as simple as stepping through a doorway, unlike the discomfort of apparition or portkeys. He'd been disappointed to find that his new powers overwhelmed any focusing tool he tried to use, but if he could study a sling ring and the enchantments used to create it, he could theoretically replicate its properties. More important, if he mastered the portals, he'd be promoted from novice to apprentice, which would give the liberty to access the entire Kamar Taj library and leave the compound unsupervised at his leisure.

That night, Harry dreamed that he was a giant the size of a small mountain, lumbering through a city of glittering skyscrapers, struggling not to crush people and cars under his gigantic feet. He narrowly avoided knocking over a building with his arm as he turned to find that he was in the company of six other giants. He was the tallest of them by far; the only one that came up to his chin was an attractive blond man eyes the color of clear skies, a short beard across his face, and enormous muscles. dressed in strange metal armor, with complete with a red cape, and carrying a hammer that crackled with electricity. Only an inch shorter than the blond tower of stereotypical masculinity was a green-skinned hulk of a man, more beast than human, with what looked like muscles piled on muscles and a feral look in his eyes.

There was a dark haired, dark eyed man in a suit of red and gold armor with a glowing chest plate as the centerpiece who stood a head shorter than the green troll-man. Everything about the way this man carried himself screamed "arrogant playboy with a hero complex." The fourth giant was much shorter than the armored man. Another paragon of blond-haired, blue-eyed male beauty, his eyes were level with the nearest skyscraper. He was dressed in a red, white, and blue soldier's uniform, and he carried a circular metal shield painted to match his outfit. The man didn't cause the slightest disturbance in the tiny city with his steps and seemed completely oblivious to his own larger than life stature. A head shorter than the shield-carrier, the last of Harry's giant companions were a muscular, sandy-haired man with a bow and arrow and a beautiful woman with red hair who carried a pair of enormous knives. Both of them looked deadly.

Harry glanced down at himself, getting vertigo when he noticed the height difference between himself and the city, and saw that he was dressed in a deep green version of Ministry Auror fatigues, complete with a cloak and gold accents. A sound made Harry look up, and he realized that he and his fellow giants had stopped walking.

Standing before them was another unnaturally muscular humanoid. But unlike Harry's feral, green-skinned companion, this giant stood only an inch shorter than Harry himself and had purple skin. His pale eyes glittered with intelligence and unmistakable madness. He held up his left hand, and Harry saw that it was encased in a glove made of golden metal with six slots over the knuckles and center. As Harry watched, six glowing gemstones, each shining with a different color of the rainbow, fell from the sky and inserted themselves into the slots. With each gemstone the purple giant grew taller and taller until he dwarfed even the mountain-sized Harry, and when the gauntlet was completed, he snapped his metal-encased fingers.

There was a flash of blinding white light. Somewhere a bird screeched, and Harry woke with a startled yelp. Instinctively his hand flew to his forehead, but his scar did not hurt at all. After a moment spent taking deep, calming breaths, he realized the bird he'd heard in the dream was a phoenix.

Was it a premonition? Some warning from the Phoenix Force about the threat it had sensed and need his help to stop? As Harry thought about it, he realized he'd seen the green gem once before; inside the Eye of Agamotto. He tried to make sense of it, to remember what the amulet contained, but he was too tired, and the details of the dream were fading from his memory.

Eventually he fell back asleep, and when he did, it only led to more dreams, even stranger than the first.

He saw a figure costumed in deep green floating above a circular wooden shield that was rotting and cracked, throwing fire at a trio of armored monsters standing on its face. Ferocious battles between colorful apparitions and armies of faceless shadows. Bolts of lightning stabbing down from a dusky sky like giant swords to strike a tiny orb of bright light. A warrior dressed in white and armed with a pair of glowing metal rods locked in vicious combat with a giant bird that bore the head of a beautiful woman.

A figure carved of roiling flames begging a man in a star-spangled soldier's uniform and a woman who held red light in her hands to remember a promise.

The assault of perplexing images intensified until Harry could no longer distinguish one vision from the next. Overwhelmed as he was, he did not remember most of the dreams when he awoke the next morning.

…

_SHIELD Helicarrier, Northern Atlantic Ocean near Massachusetts, November of 2001_

Nick Fury was fairly certain he was going to have an aneurism. A dedicated team of his best scientists had been working round the clock to trace the source of the strange energy wave that had nearly knocked the Helicarrier out of the sky, but to no avail. They knew that it came from somewhere in Europe. They knew that it had affected both Earth's magnetic field and, to a lesser extent, its gravity. Golden auroras had been reported near the poles in the aftermath, and those who witnessed them later reported having strange dreams about a giant firebird. A few rather vocal conspiracy theorists had insisted on internet forums that it was a preemptive strike for an alien invasion, but most people dismissed their concerns with a shrug.

Worse for Fury, the energy wave had had a curious effect on the Tesseract. The cube had destroyed all the equipment in its immediate vicinity during the Event, as everyone had taken to calling it, and had been even more temperamental than usual ever since. Fury had been hounding his best science teams for answers, but they had none to give.

He would not lose his temper. He would not berate his people for something outside of their control. He would not… Oh damn it all to hell.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?"

Clint Barton chuckled to himself from his perch in the air vent.

Hours later he sat down with Natasha Romanoff in the helicarrier's austere mess hall, recounting the Director's half-meltdown and mounting paranoia about the Event and his science team's inability to learn anything meaningful about it, to her great amusement. Not that anyone but him could tell she was laughing to herself behind the unflappable expression on her face; only her eyes gave her away. Clint had been working hard to get her to loosen up since he'd rescued her from the Red Room, and one of his preferred methods was telling her embarrassing stories about their superiors, who still didn't fully trust her despite the recent end of her probationary period.

"He's going to give himself a heart attack if he doesn't relax," the former KGB agent said dryly when Clint finished, smirking.

He snorted. "That man's been up to his one good eye in paranoia for as long as I've known him. His heart hasn't given out yet." Clint put a hand on his chin as he thought about it. "Though now that you mention it, I did see a vein pulsing in his temple." At Natasha's raised eyebrow he added "Though it could have been his eyepatch. Have you noticed how much it makes him look like a pirate? Especially with that trench coat." He winced as Natasha kicked him under the table. "What?" he demanded, still grinning.

"Don't let him catch you saying that. You might not wake up in the morning, and no one will find your body." Her deadpan delivery made it difficult to tell whether she was joking or not.

Clint's smile widened even further. "Aw, Nat you do care!"

This time the kick made him cry out softly, and his smile faltered for a moment. Surely, they'd gotten to the nickname stage by now? But as Clint thought about it, he remembered the first time he'd called her that. The kick she'd unleashed then had landed in an altogether more sensitive spot. Natasha's lips twitched upward, the movement so small and quick that even Clint's trained eyes would have missed it had he not spent most of the last year in her company on missions where such tiny shifts in body language could mean the difference between life and death. His grin returned in full force.

So the infamous Black Widow did appreciate his humor and the nickname. There was hope for her yet.

...


	5. 5: Dreaming With Eyes Wide Open

**In response to some of my reviewers and my own reflections on my work, I have made some minor edits to each of the previous chapters, including the addition of location stamps. Some are only a sentence or two, but the meditation and dream scenes from Chapter 4 have received some major changes that I highly recommend reading. **

**This story is now cross-posted on AO3.**

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

…

_Kamar-Taj Compound, Kathmandu, Nepal, November of 2001_

The Ancient One's voice was soft and soothing, the sort of tone she'd use to sing a lullaby. It was a voice she only used for two things: mind manipulation magics, and meditation instructions. Today, it was the latter, and Harry was her sole student. "You're apparition ability is similar to what you're attempting now," she was saying. "You must focus on a single destination and form a clear picture of it in your mind. The clearer the image, the easier it will be conjure a portal. Conversely, the less clear your picture, or the less you focus on it, the more time it will take for the gateway to appear."

They stood in one of the many courtyards of Kamar-Taj overlooking the mountains surrounding Kathmandu. Reserved as it was for private training sessions, the square of leveled cobblestones was too small for more than one sparing pair and boasted a gurgling fountain on one side.

"Foreknowledge of your destination is essential, but distance is also something to consider. When you're traveling from one end of the globe to another the portal becomes that much harder to form. Most sorcerers can travel between planets, and more powerful ones can traverse solar systems. You're probably going to have an even greater effective travel range once you master the technique, but if you are pushing the limits of that envelope or visiting a spot you only know by reputation such as the top of Mt. Everest, the portal will take longer to form, and in a fight those extra seconds could cost you your life."

Harry glanced at her without moving his head to show he was listening, but he did not really see her. He was pointing his left forefinger at a spot directly in front of him while his right hand traced a circle before him. In his mind he saw a derelict room, a room he had not visited in nearly three months. He focused all of his attention on that room and his yearning to enter it, and let his energies flow of their own accord, mimicking what he'd felt when he had held a sling ring in his hand. The sensation of holding a sling ring was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was as though he had been standing in a revolving door, a door that spun so rapidly it was impossible to see the myriad places it could lead to, a door that could deposit him anywhere he wished if only he knew how to operate it.

A circle of orange-gold sparks appeared in the air a few feet in front of Harry's hand, rapidly expanding as the air it surrounded shimmered and the image of a decaying foyer flickered into existence. Harry lowered his hands as the portal stabilized. He glanced at the Ancient One and saw that she was smiling slightly, as though she'd won a small bet.

Though she was by no means a complete stoic, the Ancient One was unflappably serene, and her expressions and body language were always rather subdued. From her, a smile like that was the equivalent of Oliver Wood whooping when Harry caught the Snitch in record time at the Quidditch match refereed by Snape in his first year. "Well done," she said, sounding genuinely impressed. "You managed it on your first try. Most people need four or five just to even start."

Harry flushed in embarassed pride. It was one thing for magic to be easier to perform without a fragment of a foreign, hostile soul leeching off him. It was quite another to control magic itself and perform a task as complex as apparition, if not more so, almost perfectly after just one try. It would have been too much, he supposed, to wish that he could do this without losing everything he held dear first.

_Almost everything_, Harry corrected himself. He still had Teddy; that boy had Harry wrapped around his thumb the instant they met, godson or no. "Well, I did choose a place I was already familiar with," he said modestly as he willed the portal to close.

The Ancient One shook her head. "If you think that matters, then your self-esteem issues run deeper than I realized. Every initiate starts with a place they already know. If anything this should have been more difficult for you since you lack a sling ring to focus your powers through."

Harry couldn't argue with her there. The wand magic he had used for most of his life was faster, easier to learn, and more energy efficient than its wandless counterparts. By all rights, creating a swirling firestorm the size of Central Park without a wand should have left him at least a little winded, but when he'd done so while practicing on a magically concealed island in the Indian Ocean he'd felt no more tired than he had when telekinetically lifting a feather.

The Ancient One spoke again. "Let's try something else. A portal to a place you've seen in a photograph but never visited. A famous city or landmark will do."

Harry considered her words and extended his hands once more. He knew he ought to choose a place he'd always been interested in visiting and had seen plenty of pictures of. Egypt, perhaps? But something told him he ought to go somewhere else. It sounded like birdsong, so faint as to be less than a whisper, and yet he heard it; the whisper of the Phoenix Force. The degree to which Harry could trust the cosmic entity was almost entirely dependant on his own emotional balance. It was… whispering to him, a gentle insistence.

Harry let the Phoenix guide him as he opened the portal and stepped through, only subconsciously aware of the Ancient One following him.

Harry opened his eyes and lowered his arms, turning slowly to take in his new surroundings. He was standing on a narrow mountain ridge carpeted with trees. Cool, crisp air fresher than anything he'd ever experienced filled his nose as he took a deep breath and closed the portal. Down the mountain to his right was a small lake full of brown water and tiny islands. On the other side lay the mottled, grayish checkerboard that was the city of Kathmandu. Channeling the Phoenix to enhance his eyes, a trick he'd simply called 'Phoenix Sight,' he could just make out the tallest tower of the Kamar Taj compound, with its golden roof and white walls.

Harry turned his gaze back on the Ancient One and saw that she looked unsurprised by his odd choice. That confused him, and he said as much.

"I saw this moment when I peered into the future," she explained. "You may want to look behind you."

Harry blinked as he tried to puzzle out the non-sequitur, but a sound from behind him interrupted his nascent train of thought. Turning, he caught sight of something enormous, white, and made of metal streaking through the morning sky on a collision with his face. It was a commercial passenger jet, a 747 painted in the colors of the Nepalese flag, and two of its four engines were in flames.

With a yelp of surprise, Harry did not respond accordingly so much as react on instinct. He thrust out with both hands and focused with all his mental might on the stricken aircraft. Power flowed through him like a river of all consuming fire, a torrent of invisible energy that wrapped itself around the incoming aircraft in a fraction of a second and-

Harry barely had time to correct himself. If he instantly brought the entire airplane to a complete stop when it was descending at hundreds of kilometers per hour, the inertia would likely kill everyone on board anyway. Instead, he used his telekinetic grip to shift its vector, pulling up the nose so that it overshot the ridge, missing his head by meters, and guided it towards the main runway of Kathmandu's international airport. An _Arresto Momentum_ slowed its descent, so that it looked as though the 747 were gliding through an invisible wad of jelly.

Harry used Phoenix Sight to track the plane as he eased it out of his telekinetic grip, extending the landing gear and setting it down as gently as he could in the middle of the runway. It wasn't a party soft landing, and the acceleration of being shoved about by Harry's telekinetic grip had probably rendered everyone on board unconscious. Still, the people on board would live, and hopefully walk away with nothing but a bit of soreness and a thrilling story for their friends and family.

Harry released the power and lowered his arms, then rounded on the Ancient One."What the _hell _was that about?" he demanded, sounding distressingly like Uncle Vernon had when Dumbledore summoned Kreacher into his living room at ten past eleven one summer night.

The old sorceress had the grace to look apologetic. "Your mere presence has changed the timeline," she explained. "Certain events have been erased from the continuum. Some crises have been delayed, while others have been accelerated. This is but one example you will encounter. That plane had a design flaw that would have caused it to crash one way or another; in the original timeline its engines failed over an inhabited part of the Himalayas two years from today. There were no survivors."

Harry's thoughts immediately flew to his recent onslaught of strange dreams. Most of them had passed out of his memory, but there was one that stood out vividly; a bird made of fire floating above a black plain where six towering figures stood in a line between a set of six glowing gems that glowed with the light of a rainbow and an army of twisted creatures led by a giant Harry saw as a black hole of ferocity, narcissism, and frighteningly unbreakable resolve.

_Madness_.

Harry didn't have a clue who the beings standing on the field might be, but the identity of the giant firebird was all too obvious. He wordlessly conjured another portal and shot the Ancient One a pointed look. Raising a thin eyebrow, she followed him through.

They stood on a sloping field of healthy green grass crisscrossed by veins of black soil that betrayed the true nature of the young volcanic island. A breeze tinged with the salty scent of the ocean made their robes billow around them. Located in the heart of the Indian Ocean and concealed by powerful enchantments, the vaguely shield-shaped landmass had been used by the Masters of the Mystic Arts for a little over a century ever since its growth had stabilized as a retreat and as a training ground far away from the hubbub of Kamar-Taj and the city around it.

Harry stared out over the pristine fields and unspoiled blue ocean beyond for a long moment, then turned to face the Ancient One. "Can the Phoenix Force see the future?" he asked.

Her raised eyebrow would have been answer enough. "The Phoenix Force is one of the most powerful forces in all of existence," she said. "It can do _anything_. The only limits are those of its host and those which it has placed on itself. But from what you've told me of the seers of your world, I can't imagine why you of all people would want to be able to look into the future."

Harry shook his head. "I don't. But it looks like I don't have a choice." He paused for a moment. "I've been having… _dreams_. Like nothing I've ever experienced before. In the past, I've had nightmares and sojourns into Voldemort's mind, but that was only because of the soul fragment stuck in my head. These dreams, though, they're not like that. They're random and chaotic, and the things I see… They all seem to be metaphors. Visions with a deeper meaning than what I perceive on the surface, yet I can't understand what I see in most of them. And they come and go at random.

"Sometimes I can sleep for several nights in a row without a single vision, and sometimes I get an onslaught so rapid I can't remember most of them the next morning." Harry felt his legs and tongue go leaden as he forced his next words out. "I'm _scared_ of those visions. Why I keep getting them when I'm not even supposed to be a seer. Why they feel so real. What they might mean."

Harry stopped to take a breath, opened his mouth to keep speaking, and then he closed it abruptly. The Ancient One let the silence linger until it was clear Harry had said his piece before she answered.

"The Phoenix Force touches all aspects of creation. It connects with and manipulates the concepts of where, when, how, thought, energy, and mortality as easily as you and I breathe the air of this planet we call home. These visions are not in themselves something to be afraid of. The future is always in motion. Nothing is set in stone until it has left the present for the past. Whenever I use the Eye to look into the future, I can only see possibilities and the events that lead to them.

"Record everything you remember of these visions. Focus less on the events they predict and more on the people and entities you see. Often one person can be found at the center of multiple possibilities, and if you follow their path, it will grant you a greater degree of insight into what the future is most likely to hold."

The last sentence made Harry's eyes widen in sudden understanding. "What about objects?" he blurted.

The Ancient One tilted her bald head to one side. "Some items can play a central role in future events, yes. What have you seen?"

Harry lifted a hand and concentrated. He had little practice with conjuring illusions, save those used to disguise his own appearance, but now was as good a time as any to try for something more extroverted. Six bright lights the size of Harry's signet ring appeared over his open palm, each glowing a different color of the rainbow. The lights were arranged in a slowly rotating circle in a purple field so dark it was almost black, shot through with veins of gold that somehow looked sickly. In the center of the circle was an amorphous, bird-shaped mass of fire that flapped its phantom wings so rapidly one might have thought it was caught in a storm and struggling to escape a violent updraft.

The Ancient One stared at the image for a long moment, clearly startled though doing her best to conceal it. "You said the stone in the Eye of Agamotto has siblings, and together they form a rainbow that can rewrite the fabric of the universe," Harry said gravely. "This is the rainbow you were referring to, wasn't it."

She nodded. "I think the meaning of this particular vision is clear enough. Someone is attempting to gather the Infinity Stones, and whatever end they wish to use them for will put you at odds with them."

Harry sighed, letting the illusion fade away and lowering his hand. "As long as whoever it is doesn't run around calling themselves 'the Dark Lord' I don't mind," he said, the insincerity of his nonchalance painfully obvious.

The Ancient One sighed. "Recall what I told you about the consequences of your arrival in this dimension."

Harry blinked. "You said that the timeline has been rewritten. Some things that were almost certainly going to happen have been erased, and some things are going to happen much sooner than before." He sharpened his gaze as he continued to stare at her. "You haven't foreseen this before."

"Not exactly. I knew that someone was attempting to gather the Stones, but I also knew that I would not live to see the outcome. The events that will lead to my death are inevitable, but now I have even less time to find my successor and prepare him for what is to come."

It took Harry a moment to process the full meaning of her words, and when he did, his heart plummeted. "No," he whispered. "You can't mean…"

She offered him a sad smile. "It is not your fault. I've lived on borrowed time for six centuries. Losing a decade will make no difference."

Harry sank to the grassy floor. He felt hollow. He wanted to claw his heart out, to wail at the unfairness of it all. This, he thought distantly, was how it had felt to discover the bodies of Remus and Tonks during the ceasefire at the Battle of Hogwarts. The smell of burning plant fiber infiltrated his nostrils, and he realized belatedly that the ground for a foot around him was charred and smoking. He pictured a cleansing fire and poured his chaotic emotions into it, forcing his mind to calm itself. When the burning ceased, he opened eyes he had not noticed he'd closed and stared at the Ancient One.

She was his teacher, his first friend since his arrival. She'd saved him, saved _Teddy_ when he'd reached his lowest point, and now he was going to lose her. Despite the ever-changing nature of the future, she had not foreseen a single timeline where she survived whatever cataclysm he'd inadvertently accelerated with his presence. His mouth felt dry.

"When?" Harry asked, his voice ragged.

The Ancient One pursed her lips. "Most of the world will be ringing in 2006 when my successor finds his way to Kamar-Taj. After that… Maybe a year."

Harry ran a quick mental calculation. It was November of 2001. He'd only been in this dimension for eight months. He still had another six years with her. Dimly he realized he'd only known Dumbledore for six years as well. Was that the cosmic limit to the amount of time he would have with a mentor? If so, then his luck truly was cursed. Still, this time he had advanced warning. He could prepare himself for what was to come.

Three days later, Harry found himself sitting at the small desk in his room with Teddy in his lap as he studied the papers detailing his (false) life story, educational background, financial records, and other paraphernalia; all part of the plan to seamlessly insert him into the technologically advanced society that dominated his new homeworld without drawing unwanted attention from government spies and security agencies. All he had to do now was choose a place to live. He had considered rebuilding the derelict version of Potter Manor where he'd first arrived, but decided it wouldn't be healthy to hold onto the past like that.

His old home was gone, and there was no use clinging to it.

On the Ancient One's advice, Harry had acquiesced to the idea of living in the same city as one of the Sanctums so that the Sorcerers would always be nearby to lend a hand should he need one. He'd quickly discounted Hong Kong, however, preferring to live in a city where he already spoke the language. Now he had four different potential homes to choose from; two options in New York, two in London. His carefully invested emergency supply of gold would allow him and Teddy to live comfortably in any one of them for the next five years; more than enough time to find a stable job.

Teddy was studying the papers as well, though to call what the toddler was doing 'studying' was a bit of an overstatement. Harry watched with fond amusement as his godson held one of the sheets detailing a London apartment he'd been considering in front of his face, eyes squinting as he struggled to read it. It would have been an impressive sight if Teddy wasn't holding the paper upside down. Gently, Harry tugged the slip of paper out of Teddy's slightly sticky hands (he was due for a bath within the next hour) and turned it right side up.

Teddy stared at the page a moment longer, then shook his little head. "No!" he said emphatically.

Harry gave the diagram of the apartment's internal layout a long look. "Definitely not," he agreed; the arrangement of rooms _was_ rather atrocious. As he tossed that one aside, Teddy suddenly pointed at another, babbling excitedly.

"That one, that one!" he said in what Harry had learned to recognize as his _I'm __not taking 'no' for an answer_ voice.

Harry skimmed through the sheet of paper that had captured his godson's interest. It was the larger of the two New York townhomes he had to choose from; four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and surprisingly spacious by New York standards considering his budget, it was within walking distance of the New York Sanctum yet out of the way of major traffic routes. Harry felt the corners of his lips twitch upward as he read the address. "What do you think?" he asked Teddy, only half joking.

"It's pewfect," Teddy said, nodding imperiously, his face morphing into what looked unnervingly like a much younger version of Sirius. The aristocratic features combined with the decisive gesture made him look like the world's smallest, cutest king, and Harry felt his heart melt. He committed the address to memory and conjured a slip of parchment with the words and a message already printed into it. Telekinetically, Harry folded the memo into a paper airplane and sent it zooming through the Sanctum to inform Master Karl Mordo of his choice.

_Manhattan, New York City, New York, November of 2001_

There was little fuss the day Harry moved into his new home at the Southwestern end of Greenwich village. It was a four story townhouse with pristine white outer walls and large windows, one side facing a street barely wide enough for two lanes of vehicle traffic, it reminded him of a less gloomy version of 12 Grimmauld Place, though it looked distinctly out of place in New York. None of his neighbours questioned the unusually smooth movement of furniture and personal effects into the house or the secretive nature of the young single father who lived there. Indeed, the only ones who ever paid them any attention were a kindly young couple and their two children who lived two doors down and the older couple across the street.

No one other than Harry, the Ancient One, and Daniel Drumm knew that powerful spells had been placed on the house that would deflect the attention of anyone with remotely hostile or nosy intent. In theory, as long as he and Teddy lived there, not even the most desperate criminals would consider attempting to break into it, and spies, government employed or otherwise, would ignore it altogether. This last detail was crucial; the unnatural nature of Harry's "save the plane" stunt in Kathmandu was too glaringly obvious to passed off as a lucky trick of the wind, and already the sorcerers' informants were passing word that spy agencies all over the world were searching doggedly for the mysterious force that had saved flight NI 600. Harry didn't even bother watching the news reports; he knew from experience what they were likely calling it.

To Harry's great amusement, the home address read "12 Morton Street, Manhattan" despite the fact that there was no house number eleven preceding it or a number thirteen following it. On his first night there, Harry had another onslaught of prophetic dreams. This time he only remembered one of them: a white silhouette outlined in emerald green light standing on a platform floating on a sea of black water under a black sky, staring into a pair of giant purple eyes that loomed out of the darkness like a grotesque imitation of a binary sunset.

Harry did not need to look up the anecdotes of ancient sorcerers stored in Kamar-Taj's library to recognize those eyes.

…

_SHIELD Helicarrier, Southern Atlantic Ocean, November of 2001_

Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff, Hawkeye and Black Widow, the best agents SHIELD had ever seen, stared at their handler as if he'd grown a second head. Clint spoke for the both of them. "Let me get this straight," he said, not bothering to conceal his incredulity behind his famously unbreakable mask of professionalism. "Fury wants us to track down whatever saved that plane in Nepal on a _hunch_? Even if an enhanced individual and not some piece of advanced tech was responsible, they've left no trace. No amount of surveillance equipment can track them down, assuming they even exist.

"How do you expect _us _to find them?! And if by some fluke we actually do find them, _if _they exist, how the hell are we supposed to deal with them? They must be decent enough if they saved a crashing plane, but if they turn hostile we're screwed. We're good at what we do, Phil, but even we can't fight someone who can break our necks with their mind. Assuming we find them in the first place, of course."

Phil Coulson waited until he was certain Clint's rant was over before he allowed a tiny, sympathetic smile to mar his own unflappable mask. "I agree that it's pointless, at least with the information we have. I advised _Director_ Fury to wait and see. If whoever or whatever this is risked exposure to save lives once, it'll probably do so again, but the Council's riding him hard to find this… telekinetic, if that's what we're really dealing with. Public news outlets are already going nuts, and people are demanding answers we don't have. This would have been bad enough under normal circumstances, but after 9/11… I say do your best. You may get lucky."

"And if we don't?" Natasha asked, speaking for the first time since their little meeting began.

Phil shrugged. "Then we recall you for something more useful."

"And if we do get lucky? What then?" she insisted. "I've seen the footage. Whoever or whatever this is may be too powerful to fight."

Phil's grim expression was answer enough. Clint's childish groan was only a partial exaggeration of his feelings on the matter, but for once no one bothered to call him out on it.

…

****Happy New Year!****


	6. 6: A Wild Phoenix Chase

**I'm back! For now, anyway. I have recently completed my profile, which should provide some answers about how I write and what to expect (or not expect) from me in the future.**

**In response to one of my reviewers:**

** HellsMaji: I honestly forgot that little detail, but keep in mind that Harry's magic has completely changed. His old fighting style is essentially useless, just like how his wand is now useless. He has had to relearn everything from scratch, and he is already pretty skilled in his new martial art.**

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

**…**

_Potter Household, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, November of 2001_

Teddy was sleeping soundly after a bed-time story (_Babbity Rabbity and Her Cackling Stump_, read from Harry's copy of _The Tales of Beedle The Bard_, which itself had been a birthday gift from Hermione). A fire crackled in the old fashioned stone hearth of Harry's living room, and the only other illumination came from an orb of golden light that had been conjured and left suspended in midair near Harry's own head, shining on the newspaper he was reading. He sat in an overstuffed armchair, the double of his favorite seat in the Gryffindor common room, and found himself oddly fixated on an article about a new hotshot neurosurgeon. Stephen Strange was only twenty seven, but he had an eidetic memory that had allowed him to graduate with his MD and his PhD at the same time, and already the man was making waves with the near miraculous neuro-surgeries he conducted at Metro-General Hospital right here in New York.

Harry had limited interest in muggle medicine, but he wasn't reading to satisfy his curiosity. The sun had set hours earlier, but he was too restless to find any real comfort in sleep, thus his fixation on the article. His dreams were largely responsible for his unease. In the most recent onslaught, he'd glimpsed a man-shaped column of fire attempting to conceal itself from a group of shadows with an insignia on their shoulders; an eagle stylized to form a seal of some sort.

Harry couldn't make sense of the symbol, but he had a shrewd idea of what it meant. A spy agency that specialized in the extraordinary was looking for him, and while he could hide from them as long as he wanted, he would have to interact with them if he wanted to use his powers to make a difference in this world.

The Phoenix intruded, and when Harry realized what it was suggesting, he couldn't quite suppress an evil grin of the sort that would immediately earn a suspicious glare from Professor McGonagall. Checking his watch, he decided to give it three days before he acted.

_SHIELD Helicarrier, South China Sea, November of 2001_

"So, remind me again why the director thought it was a good idea to drag this rig to the other side of the world and risk publicly exposing it to who knows how many potentially hostile spy agencies?" The thinly veiled complaint came from Jasper Sitwell, a generally unpopular but useful member of Fury's personal staff who was clearly struggling with the umpteenth new time zone of the helicarrier's journey from the Western Hemisphere.

Phil Coulson shot the man a quelling look. "Do the words 'potential Omega Level threat' mean anything to you?"

"Who says it's Omega Level?" Sitwell shot back in his most sniping voice. His petulant expression made the remark sound less like a capable agent of SHIELD criticizing his superiors and more like a child throwing a tantrum over his math homework. He was usually calm, collected, and professional in even the most dangerous situations, but lack of sleep was clearly getting to him. "All we know is that something or someone out there managed to miraculously pick up a crashing plane without touching it and set it down safely at its proper destination. Dangerous, yes, but I'd hardly call it an Omega Level threat."

Though Coulson privately agreed with Sitwell on that score, he knew better than to voice his opinion, since doing so would only encourage the man's incessant complaining. Instead he said "We've never encountered a potential telekinetic before. We don't know what their limits are or how they can do what they do. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe they're only an Alpha Level threat. Maybe they've been reading _Carrie_. Maybe they're a huge football fan. They could be anything or anyone. We don't know _anything_ about them, and that's the biggest problem. The director doesn't like mysteries, and frankly I don't either. So, unless you can magically conjure up a solution that tells us everything we need to know, you'll _stop complaining_."

Coulson nearly shouted the last part and got control of himself. Clearly the stress of the situation had been affecting him more than he realized. His reputation for complete unflappability was what had gotten him into his current position, and it wasn't built on exaggeration or hearsay. However, his outburst seemed to shut Sitwell up, so all wasn't lost. Yet…

Coulson's phone vibrated in the pocket of his impeccably pressed suit, and he was mildly surprised to recognize the caller ID as that of the unsecured civilian phone Barton used when he was on a mission and, for whatever reason, could not speak freely. Thumbing the answer button and bringing it to his ear, he said "Phil here."

"We struck out. I can't believe I let you talk me into this!" Clint's strident voice rang out. Translation: neither he nor Romanoff had managed to learn anything useful.

"It can't be that bad," Phil said in a would-be soothing tone that would fool even the most astute eavesdroppers. "I'm sure you found at least one thing interesting."

_Not even one lead?_

"No, we haven't! But that meet and greet you recommended is a go, so we may get lucky. Past experience isn't making me optimistic, though."

_None so far. We still need to interview the pilot and co-pilot, but the prospects don't look good._

"Keep your chin up. I want all the juicy details."

_Do not abort. If they're hiding something, coax it out._

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But if it's another dud, I want outta here. And a refund!"

_This is our last chance. I don't think we'll gain anything by extending our stay._

"If that happens, I'll do my best, but you may be surprised."

_If they give us a lead, we follow it. Otherwise, we'll call it off and get you out of there._

Clint sighed into his receiver with theatrical exaggeration, creating a tiny burst of static over his reply. "Fine. We'll listen to the expert. I'll talk to you later. Then we'll see who gets to say 'I told you so'."

_Understood. Hawkeye out._

Phil clicked the call over and suppressed a sigh. So far, his prediction about the sheer pointlessness of the mission was spot on.

_New York Sanctum, New York City, USA, November of 2001_

The Ancient One absently conjured a stuffed tauntaun and levitated it into the arms of the blue-haired three year old she was babysitting. Immediately the boy reached out with both hands and summoned it into his arms, giggling madly as his eyes shifted to deep gray and his shock of blue hair vanished into his scalp. Teddy Lupin's metamorphosing antics usually made the old sorceress smile, but just then she was too lost in her thoughts to offer more than perfunctory attention. Mordo usually made a much better babysitter than her, if only because he didn't have as much blood on his hands, but just then he was busy investigating a demonic possession incident in the UAE, and she was the only other person Harry trusted with his godson.

She had spent many hours scanning possible futures, searching for some clue as to what had drawn the attention of the Phoenix Force, but thus far she had found nothing. It was as if the Eye of Agamotto itself was refusing to let her see the events. Or perhaps, her own mind was unable to comprehend what she had witnessed and had locked away the memories of what she'd seen out of self-preservation instinct. Nevertheless, the Ancient One remained convinced that something was out there, something that threatened to change the course of events, sending the timeline in a direction even she couldn't predict, and that scared her like nothing else had in centuries.

Teddy giggled from his high chair, and the Ancient One realized he'd somehow managed to turn the tauntaun into a dragon. Her grim mood lightened marginally. The idea of an entire sub-race of humans who were born with magic inside them fascinated her to no end, and she'd been delighted when Harry allowed her free access to the small library he'd been carrying on his person when he arrived in this dimension. Her attempts to replicate his old magic had met with limited success, but she didn't mind. Living as long she had, she'd come to appreciate the value of learning for its own sake in a way and to a degree few beings could, or would, understand.

As Teddy cuddled with his new toy, the Ancient One's thoughts drifted back to the visions the Time Stone had granted her. While she couldn't perceive what had actually prompted the Phoenix Force to intervene, she did know one thing; the last Dark Phoenix had made enemies, and those enemies would not make any distinction between the current host and his predecessor.

That was a war waiting to happen, and there was almost nothing she could do stop it.

_Police Department Headquarters, Kathmandu, Nepal, November of 2001_

The Nepalese police officer glared at Natasha's SHIELD issue badge so hard one might have thought he was trying to burn a hole through it with his gaze. The man's slightly slanted eyes were narrowed to slits, which did little to enhance the effect. Natasha resisted the urge to snatch back the badge before he'd accepted its authenticity (she'd _earned_ the stupid thing, goddamnit).

Finally, the man relaxed his stance, handed over the badge, and motioned her through the glass doors. Clint was already there, engaged in what appeared to be serious conversation with another local officer. The archer glanced in her direction, politely excused himself, and beckoned her forward. Clint's companion led through a warren of cubicles and corridors to a small room where the pilot they'd come to speak with was waiting.

A Nepalese man in his late forties, he was leaning forward in his seat, hands clasped on the table in front of him. Natasha could read him easily enough. The man was obviously relieved to be alive, but he also seemed nervous. It wasn't the fear of a criminal who knew he'd been caught, but the nervousness of a civilian who was surrounded by people in positions of authority. Natasha had been extensively educated in psychology by the instructors at the Red Room, and she knew that the best way to get the man to talk was to get him to relax. Still, her talents were better suited to seduction and interrogation than interviewing shell-shocked civilians, and so she let Clint take the lead.

Clint spent a moment going over the records, checking the flight number, schedule, weather conditions, and specifications of the aircraft with the occasional humorous interjection. Beneath his professional demeanor the archer was a genuinely affable jokester, a trait he could use to break the ice in tense conversations, as he was doing now with the pilot. The man's tense posture relaxed somewhat, and Clint began asking the real questions.

"Can you tell us when things started to go wrong with the flight?"

The pilot hesitated for only a moment, then began to speak in flawless, accented English. "We started our descent at 10:00, right on time. I don't remember exactly when the engines gave out, but I certainly felt it. There were two small explosions, right after another, and suddenly we were descending way too fast."

He faltered, then continued, seemingly determined to get the whole story out in one go. "I tried to pull up and put full throttle to the engines I still had, but it wasn't enough. My copilot was panicking. He was no help. Can't say I blame him. We were going to hit the mountain, and there was nothing either of us could do to stop it. I have piloted commercial aircraft for twenty years. I never imagined I would die doing it. I closed my eyes then. I was… too afraid to face my death. I suppose that's when physics broke. The plane jolted again, and I thought another engine had blown up."

"But that wasn't what happened," Clint said gently.

"No," the pilot agreed. "I opened my eyes then. I couldn't stop myself. We started slowing down. I don't know how, but our speed was reduced, and then suddenly we were pulling up. It wasn't because of me or my copilot. My hands had been thrown from the control yoke, and we had only two out of four engines. And yet somehow, impossibly, we were ascending. It happened so fast. We cleared the mountain top, and that was when the g-forces caught up to me. I - how do you say - blacked out."

The pilot seemed to sag as he finished his story, but there was something about his facial expression that suggested he wasn't finished. Was he hiding something? No, Natasha thought. He wasn't hiding something per se, but there was an element he'd left out because he was unsure whether they'd believe him. If that was the case, the man was mistaken. Hawkeye and Black Widow were the best of the best for an organization that specialized in dealing with weird stuff. Whatever he had seen or thought he'd seen wouldn't faze them.

Clint seemed to notice it as well. "Sir, if you think you know something, don't hide it because it sounds crazy. We deal with crazy things all the time."

The pilot hesitated. "I… saw something on the mountain top. The ridge that we were about to crash into is covered with trees, but there is a large clearing at the top. I know this because I used to hike there between flights. Just before I lost consciousness, I caught sight of a figure in the clearing on the ridge. Maybe there were two of them, I'm not sure. I couldn't discern any details, not when the plane was still moving as fast as it was. I would have dismissed it as a hiker, but the path leading to that ridge collapsed years ago. And I could have sworn the figure had his hands raised in front of them."

Natasha felt something heavy settle in her gut, and she glanced at Clint. He was looking at her, his expression grim, the nervous pilot all but forgotten.

Hours later they contacted the helicarrier from the hotel suite they'd set up and secured on arrival in Kathmandu. The room's modest desk had been cleared of its customary coffee pot and mugs to make way for a black laptop equipped with the latest encryption software and anti-hacking measures.

Phil Coulson's impassive face stared up from a video calling app as Clint and Natasha recounted their interview with the pilot of the miracle airplane.

"He said he saw someone at the top of the ridge?" Phil said, frowning. "What makes you think it wasn't a hallucination, or poor memory caused by trauma?"

Clint shrugged. "His copilot corroborated his story. Eyewitness accounts usually vary pretty significantly, but both of them said they saw something or someone standing at the top of the ridge. We didn't tell either of them what the other had told us, and they hadn't discussed it between themselves before we spoke to them - too busy reassuring their families - so it's unlikely the idea spread from one to the other by power of suggestion."

Phil frowned. "People never have the same hallucination. If they both saw the same thing, then it was real."

Natasha nodded. "I thought so too, but according to the pilot the hiking path leading to that particular ridge collapsed three years ago."

"Let's see about that. What's the name of the mountain we're talking about?"

Clint supplied it, and Phil ran the name through SHIELD's self-updating database, which included software designed to filter out outdated, inaccurate, or irrelevant data. A moment later, a blue topographical map of the mountain appeared on the screen, partially obscuring the image of Phil's office. A series of meandering yellow lines highlighted the various hiking paths that crossed it. Only one of them provided access to the summit, and sure enough, a significant portion of it was highlighted in red, indicating it was now impassable.

Clint and Natasha traded uneasy looks. Phil was frowning at the display, as though the force of his disapproval could change it to something that didn't imply what it did.

Natasha broke the silence "I think we should pay this mountain a visit. If there was someone up there, there'll have left traces. We can take a quinjet."

Phil nodded and began typing furiously into his own computer. "Good idea. I'll send a quinjet to the extraction point at 2100 hours tonight. The sooner we get there the better."

"It's been almost a week since the incident. Any traces may already be gone," Clint pointed out.

Natasha spoke to it. "That may be true, but it's still worth a look. It's not like we have any other leads."

Clint sighed. "We don't get paid enough for this crap."

…

"I told you so!" Clint all but yelled over the freezing wind as he and Natasha shuffled about on the mountaintop, where it had only begun snowing five minutes after they had landed, as if nature itself was conspiring against them as part of some great cosmic joke. The two of them had departed Kathmandu's crowded city center an hour earlier and boarded a quinjet in one of the outlying valleys.

A brand new design provided by Stark Industries and a successor to the old quadjets, the quinjet had a bulky main body that tapered into a cockpit that looked as if it belonged on a military chopper, downsloping wings that could fold upwards in landing configuration, and a pair of powerful wing-mounted turbines that allowed it to hover and maneuver as well as any helicopter without sacrificing the great travel speeds afforded by the pair of hyperjet engines that adorned its two-pronged tail. The design, which gave the aircraft a passing resemblance to a manta ray, was highly modular and could be retrofitted with a variety of weapons, stealth systems, and other apparatus to suit any mission profile. Only ten of them were currently in service, but SHIELD's pilots had liked them so much that Fury had, through intermediaries, set up a contract that gave SHIELD exclusive rights to the craft for the next ten years and promptly ordered dozens more.

The ride to the mountaintop had been unusually bumpy due to the strong autumn winds, which had buffeted the quinjet so badly the pilot had been forced to put the wings in lockdown configuration when they set down. Natasha and Clint had been fruitlessly examining the mountaintop in search of clues by the light of flood lamps for fifteen minutes, but it felt as if they'd been there for days. The light snowfall was rapidly turning the ground to mush, and the glacial wind all but stabbed through their jackets.

Natasha didn't have it in her to snipe back at her partner. In fact, she would have liked nothing more than to drag him into the quinjet, fly back to the helicarrier, and shout at Fury until his ears bled for setting them on a wild goose chase, but she restrained herself. She was a Black Widow trained by the Red Room. She was _the_ Black Widow, the most dangerous woman in the world, and she did not earn that dubious honor by being petulant or impatient.

Natasha was just straightening up from a crouch when a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold laddered its way up her spine. Turning ever so slightly, she saw that Clint had shifted his gaze toward her without moving his head in a gesture she had come to associate with alarm. It took Natasha a moment to consciously identify the source of her sudden unease, and when she did, she decided that if she died on that mountain she'd find a way to return and haunt Fury to his grave.

The winds had died, surrendering their bone-rattling chill and deafening howl to an eerie silence that hung over the mountain like a shroud. As if accentuating the unnatural quiet, every single airborne snowflake had ceased all motion, floating frozen in midair like the stars against the black field of the night sky above. It was as if time itself had come to a standstill. Natasha slowly straightened to her full height, edging towards Clint. The immobilized snowflakes remained frozen where they were, melting against her skin and leaving a visible trail in her wake. Clint maneuvered his body so that they stood shoulder to shoulder, eyes scanning the cloud of motionless snowflakes and surely coming to the same conclusion she had.

They hadn't been chasing a goose; they'd been chasing a snake.

…

Harry floated above the mountain top, indifferent to the freezing temperatures as he stared down at the spies. He wore dark blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and a forest green hooded jacket. A simple black mask covered his face save for his eyes, which he concealed behind tinted aviator goggles. None of it was actually part of Harry's normal wardrobe; the entire ensemble had been conjured on a whim and infused with numerous charms to guard against the elements.

Harry knew he was being somewhat reckless trusting the Phoenix when it urged him into this, but he found that he didn't particularly care. He'd been in this dimension for less than eight months and already he'd managed to ruffle the feathers of every major government on the planet without actually revealing himself. Harry had observed Voldemort's tactics during the war and noted how the lack of concrete information about his whereabouts had done a great deal to heighten the terror, as well as how nervous the Death Eaters had been in their uncertainty of Harry's own activities. Worse, he vividly remembered the riddles he'd investigated as a student at Hogwarts and the fear they inspired. Mysteries were often frightening by nature, and more so when there was no evidence with which to solve them.

The spy and security agencies of this world were desperate to understand the un-crashed plane incident, and the longer he let their fear of another unexplained event fester, the more difficult it would be to gain their trust when he needed it most. If Harry gave them a tangible target to chase, however, it would alleviate some of the hysteria he'd generated and thus reduce the overall fear of him.

And so here he was.

Harry had enlisted the help of Master Minoru, who had been rather partial to him since their first sparring session, in identifying the airline pilots whose lives he'd saved and tracking them to their interviews with government agents. Then, with a judicious application of telepathy, he had 'persuaded' each of them to 'remember' seeing a figure on the mountain top just before blacking out. The ploy had worked beautifully. Now all he had to do was play his cards right.

"Looking for me?" he asked conversationally.

The effect was immediate. Both spies spun in his direction, one bringing a composite bow fitted with black metal arrows to bear while the other readied what looked like a taser of some sort. Harry ruthlessly stifled the urge to snort. He knew a dozen different ways to kill the agents and another dozen to subdue them without harming them, all of which could be accomplished with a hand gesture made in the space of half a second, but he wasn't here to fight.

The bowman spoke first. "Depends. Juggled any jumbo jets lately?"

"I did not _juggle_ it!" Harry said in mock outrage. "I stopped it from crashing and set it down at the airport, thank you very much."

"That was you?" the woman asked. She had luxuriant red hair that reminded Harry painfully of the Weasleys, blue-green eyes, a figure like a gymnast, and the symmetrical, regally delicate features of a supermodel. Under different circumstances he might have asked her out.

Instead he said "Well, I thought that was obvious. Unless you've met other telekinetics before?"

The spies traded looks, but only for an instant. As Harry continued to stare at them, it occurred to him that there was something familiar about these two, as if he'd known them from some previous life. Had he? Or had they appeared in his dreams? He extended a light telepathic probe that skimmed their surface thoughts, like a breeze over a lake.

"Can't say we have," the archer said finally. "But for the record, you saved many lives that day."

"And ruffled quite a few feathers, as well," Harry noted.

Both spies gave no outward sign of discomfort at his subtle undertone, but their minds flared with a mixture of annoyance, fear, and...anger? Yes, they were very angry, furious even, but not with him. Until his arrival they had been on what appeared to be a wild goose chase, and neither was amused at having been caught like fish in a barrel by an unknown being far more powerful than they were. Harry couldn't blame them. He probed a little deeper until he'd found the name of the one responsible for their predicament. _Nick Fury_…

The man Harry glimpsed in the archer's memories was tall, dark skinned, favored black trench coats, wore a patch over one eye, the loss of which he refused to discuss, and appeared paranoid enough to impress Mad-Eye Moody. That could be a problem.

Harry withdrew his mental probe as the woman spoke up. "How are you doing this?" She indicated the motionless snowfall. Harry allowed himself a smug smile behind his mask. The ability to telekinetically immobilize every object in a given radius individually, no matter how large or small and without affecting specific targets, had taken hours of practice to perfect, especially when he could have replicated such a feat with a simple Freezing Charm, but the exercise had greatly improved Harry's control, and he had to admit he was quite pleased with himself for using as casually as he did now.

"Study and practice," he said, then added sarcastically "Don't tell me you haven't taught yourselves how to move things without touching them."

"Very funny," the woman said. "Why are you here? There was no trace of you for us to track. You could have stayed completely hidden, and we'd still be on a wild goose chase."

"And leave people like you scrambling around chasing ghosts into the Himalayas? That would be rather cruel of me, don't you think? And there's no way I could use my powers to prevent things like plane crashes without revealing myself. This way we can build trust. Unless of course you want to try and arrest me while I'm holding back flood water from a broken dam."

The archer snorted. "What, you fancy yourself a superhero?"

Harry frowned. "Not really. But I think it would be irresponsible of me to hide my power when I can use it to make the world a better place. A good friend of mine called it my 'saving people thing.' Most people like that join law enforcement or the emergency services, but for someone like me that would be rather limiting, don't you think?" He lowered his voice to a menacing growl. "And don't bother offering me a job with whatever agency you work for, because the answer is 'no.' I'm not going to work for a shady organization that would force me to compromise my values or let anyone use me as their superweapon."

Both spies flinched, though almost imperceptibly. For a long moment, no one spoke. Finally the archer said "I don't think there's anything or anyone that can force you to do anything, not if you have enough power to catch a 747 and enough control to do this," he gestured vaguely at the suspended snowflakes, which had yet to melt or shift in any way. "But if even if that weren't the case, we don't force people with special abilities to join us. We protect them when they need it, and we fight the ones that other people need to be protected from. Everything we do is meant to keep people safe. As long as you don't fly around ripping people's heads off with your brain, we'll get along just fine."

Harry cast out with telepathy once more. The man was sincere. Terrified for his life and containing it beneath an iron will honed to perfection by intense training and sheer professionalism, but sincere nevertheless. Harry was impressed.

The woman chimed in. "Our boss isn't the trusting sort, but he knows the difference between friend and foe. He won't bother you if you don't give him reason to." A telepathic scan told Harry she was being sincere as well. Her thoughts were a maze of mental scars, remnants of horrors she herself had been forced to perpetrate for much of her life, but there was no malice there. She was definitely the more dangerous of the two, but she wasn't the heartless monster she thought of herself as.

"Even when he needs my help?" Harry asked dryly. Sensing their surprise, Harry laughed at the agents. "I won't work for you, but if you really are out to keep people safe then I'm willing to work _with_ you. I do appreciate that you two, at least, don't want to burn me at the stake." He reached inside his jacket pocket and summoned a rolled up scrap of parchment, which he telekinetically lowered into the woman's personal space. Carefully she reached out and plucked it from the air. "That's a number you can use to contact me. Don't use it except in an emergency, and don't bother trying to trace the calls. You'd only be led in circles." He paused, then added "By the way, you might want to tell your friend in the jet that he shouldn't have called for backup. If we ever came to blows, you really wouldn't stand a chance, no matter what you bring to bear. Meep, meep!"

The second quinjet, sent on Fury's orders after receiving a call from the pilot of the first, soared over the mountaintop like a giant bird of prey, creating a gust of wind its wake that all but knocked Black Widow and Hawkeye off their feet, but to no avail. The snow was falling once more and the freezing winds had howled back to life. Of the mysterious telekinetic, there was no sign.

Later the parchment Black Widow had been given would be studied extensively by SHIELD scientists in search of DNA samples, but no amount of testing produced a match (Widow had refused to confirm or deny Fury's accusation that she'd deliberately contaminated the parchment with her own DNA; Hawkeye was similarly tight-lipped, and no one was brave enough to challenge either of them on it). Aside from the phone number, the parchment contained the telekinetic's preferred alias, Phoenix, which baffled everyone who tried to make sense of it. After all, they had no reason to connect mythological firebirds with telekinesis. Eventually a theory began to take root among those in the know that the telekinetic had gained his powers from a near-death experience and was invoking the symbolism of the immortal firebird to reflect that, without realizing how close to the truth they actually were.

Based on the Hawk and the Widow's reports, it was clear that Phoenix was not only strong, but skilled. He had taken credit for the rescue of the doomed 747 in Kathmandu, which, based on the aircraft's specifications, suggested a telekinetic lifting strength in excess of 300 tons and an effective range of several kilometers. Footage from the meeting on the mountain top confirmed that Phoenix had immobilized millions of snowflakes falling across the entire mountain and shut down the sustained winds of a building snowstorm without creating a vacuum or affecting levels of breathable oxygen, which indicated an astonishing degree of precision and control. He appeared to have some form of extra-sensory perception, as he was able to detect the incoming SHIELD reinforcements and fled so quickly no one realized he was gone until the snow had started falling again. This hypothesis was supported by the fact that Phoenix displayed the ability to control items outside of his line of sight and effectively nullified any potential battle plans meant to catch him by surprise. Disturbingly, no one could discern whether this theoretical ability was how Phoenix had known to go to the mountaintop to find the SHIELD agents looking for him, which suggested that he had a means of gathering detailed information that was both reliable and undetectable.

It came as no shock that Nick Fury was not happy when he read the report on Phoenix. If half the conclusions SHIELD had drawn about the mysterious telekinetic were true, and at this point there was no reason to believe they were not, he was the single most powerful being on the planet by a considerable margin. Worse, SHIELD knew next to nothing about him; they had no countermeasures against his powers if he turned hostile, no leverage to manipulate him with, no clues to his true identity, and no way to track him down save the number he'd provided, which was almost certainly a burner phone in any case.

It had taken a great deal of persuasion on Phil Coulson's part to convince Fury not to immediately call Phoenix and demand a more formal and thorough dialogue, but eventually he managed to wear down the one-eyed spymaster by pointing out that Phoenix had specified he was only to be contacted in an emergency and that it was a bad idea to annoy a being who could probably knock the helicarrier out of the sky with a casual wave of his hand, lack of hostility during first contact notwithstanding.

The preliminary psych evaluation of Phoenix was promising, though undermined by the fact that only two SHIELD agents had actually met him, and they'd had only one, brief conversation. Phoenix stated his intentions to use his powers for the benefit of others, which the 747 incident corroborated, and he seemed to have a proclivity for sarcasm. He was not averse to an alliance, but he seemed determined to keep it on his terms. What stood out most, however, was Phoenix's clear distrust of government agencies and spy organizations in general. The telekinetic had been at his most agitated when emphasizing that he would not allow anyone to use him as a weapon, and it was that particular detail that convinced Fury to add the phone number to his personal contact list. "Just in case," was all he said to Coulson's raised eyebrow.

What neither Natasha nor Clint made mention of on any official record was the emotional reaction Phoenix's presence had provoked in them.

"Phoenix never threatened us," Natasha explained to Phil and Fury as they sat in a secure room aboard the helicarrier, which was en route to its usual post in the waters off the east coast of the United States. "He was actually pretty friendly, and I knew logically he wasn't there to hurt us. If he wanted us dead, we would have been dead before we knew it. He just wanted to talk. I think he only froze everything to prove a point."

"But?" Fury prompted.

When Natasha didn't respond, Clint said what she would not. "You know that feeling you get when you see a volcano erupting, or watch the news about an incoming hurricane? You're in awe of the power of nature and a little afraid because you know you're at its mercy?" The director of SHIELD and his "one good eye" nodded. "When we looked at Phoenix, we got that feeling, but it was way stronger. It was scary, as in so-terrified-you-have-to-run-away-but- can't-cause-your-legs-have-turned-to-jelly level scary. It was irrational and illogical, way too big a reaction for the situation, but it was there. It was like standing next to a nuclear bomb without knowing whether it was armed. My every instinct was telling me to run away."

"It felt… primal," Natasha added. "You know how antelope seem to know instinctively that lions are their enemies? It was kind of like that. It was all I could do to talk to him without curling up into a ball or running away with my tail between my legs."

Fury broke the ensuing silence, sounding slightly constipated. "Do you think he was trying to scare you?"

Clint shook his head. "He didn't seem to notice. He knew we were afraid, but he didn't know how bad. I don't think he was trying to scare us, just get us to understand we can't mess with him. I think the terror was a side effect of his powers."

Phil rubbed his eyes, looking exceptionally tired. "And he said not to call him unless it was an emergency?" Clint nodded. Phil sighed. "We're doomed."

Coulson's pronouncement was only half-correct. As painful as it could be dealing with him, Phoenix was a dubious ally of SHIELD. The creature that would be born inside Bruce Banner three years later and eventually be dubbed "the Hulk" by the media was a different matter altogether.

**...**


	7. 7: Unstoppable Rage

**[Parts of this chapter have been rewritten as of June 2020]**

**It's been a while, but long time readers will know that's no surprise. This pandemic has been a nightmare for me to deal with, and while I know it could be worse, that doesn't make me feel any better. No one in my family has lost their job, thankfully, and no one I know has been infected with COVID, but my paternal grandmother passed away from natural causes unrelated to the pandemic a few weeks before I this chapter. That hit me pretty hard, even though I already knew she had been ailing for years and wasn't going to live for much longer, but I'm working through it.**

**On a more pleasant note, this is the longest chapter I have written by far, and it contains the first serious fight scene. It also sets up a major divergence from canon that will pay off in a big way later on, specifically by changing the fate of an infamous character, who some fans may recognize right away. Feel free to speculate who it is and what this change of fate might lead to, because they are not named in this chapter.**

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

**…**

_Greenwich Village, NYC, New York, United States, July of 2003_

A tall young man strode down a New York sidewalk, alone save for the little boy who clutched his hand, jabbering merrily to his indulgent smile. With an athletic yet lean body and features that struck a perfect balance between roguish and aristocratic, the man was undeniably handsome, but any semblance of dignity or grace was ruined by his determination to keep pace with his comparatively tiny companion, as he was forced to shorten his strides to half their usual length or risk leaving the child behind. The child didn't seem to notice. Indeed, he behaved as if his guardian was walking too slowly and was trying to urge him to go faster. They would have made an almost comically adorable sight had anyone been paying them any attention.

The odd thing was that every person they passed didn't seem to notice their presence. Everyone who glimpsed them at a distance a them so completely one might have thought they were invisible, and no one who passed within arm's reach ever paid the pair more attention than was required to avoid a collision. Stranger still, no one seemed even remotely aware of the old-fashioned mansion that was their destination, for all that its elaborate stonework and ornate windows looked distinctly out of place in cosmopolitan Manhattan. People's gazes slid over it, as if it were no more interesting than the tree leaves soaking up the strong summer sunshine.

Harry Potter didn't bother knocking on the doors to the New York Sanctum. They swung open for him at his approach, and he led a completely unfazed Teddy over the threshold. The little boy glanced around as the doors shut behind them, and he broke into a delighted grin as he spotted someone approaching from the staircase directly opposite him. "Hi, uncle Mordo!" he all but yelled, streaking forward.

Harry's face shifted into a small, knowing smile. Karl Mordo was one of the most rigid and uncompromising men he had ever met, with a troubled past and, as a result, rather black and white views on how magic should be used. Despite that, the man had a giant soft spot for children and all but melted when he spent time with Teddy. That was the chief reason Harry trusted the man to look after him on occasions such as this. The other reason was altogether more pragmatic; Mordo was, as the Ancient One's second, one of the most powerful and skilled Masters of the Mystic Arts alive, easily the equal of any one of the Sanctum Masters, which meant that he was more than capable of shredding anything that so much as contemplated an attempt on Teddy's life.

"Hello, little one," Mordo said affectionately, ruffling Teddy's hair as he returned the boy's hug. He straightened, putting a hand on the five-year-old's shoulder as Harry approached. They exchanged a brief, one-armed embrace. "You're early," Mordo said, his tone slightly questioning.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Any reason I shouldn't be?"

Mordo shrugged as they turned and headed up the stairs to the inner chambers of the sanctum. "I suppose not. Eager to get it over with?"

"Something like that."

Mordo considered it, then said "The calm before the storm is always worse than the storm itself. Is that it?"

"Exactly." Harry glanced around. "Where is Drumm?"

"At Kamar Taj."

The trio made their way through the halls of the Sanctum to a set of double doors, twice as tall as Harry and elegantly constructed of a strange black material that was neither wood nor metal nor stone. The symbol of the New York Sanctum was emblazoned across the center. Harry stopped Teddy from approaching and knelt next to him, but Mordo moved ahead, deliberately giving them some privacy. For all that he'd been Teddy's most frequent caregiver when Harry was on missions, he wasn't an interdimensional refugee. Each was all the other had from back home, and while Teddy was still too young to understand what that meant, Harry had developed a habit of saying his goodbyes as though each could be his last. Mordo understood this and dared not intrude, his status as an adopted uncle notwithstanding.

"Promise me you won't give your uncle Mordo too much trouble," Harry said, gripping Teddy's shoulders gently.

Teddy smiled mischievously. "I promise. Can we go on a vacation when you come back?"

"We could. Where do you want to go?"

"Scotland!"

Harry blinked in genuine surprise. "Why Scotland? I thought you wanted to do Disney World."

Teddy shook his head firmly. "You went to school in Scotland, didn't you? And rides at Disney World have age res - res."

"Age restrictions?" Harry offered.

"Yeah, age restrictions. I don't wanna go there until I'm old enough to do all the rides."

Harry smiled, remembering with some amusement then-eight year old Dudley's tantrum when he was prohibited from boarding a carnival ride on account of his lack of height and Vernon's impudent rage when Petunia had refused to help him bully the attendant into letting the boy on anyway. "That's very forward thinking of you, Teddy. But you don't want to grow up too fast, yeah? Trust me, adulthood sucks."

Teddy frowned pensively, but before he could speak to it Harry interrupted his train of thought by ruffling his hair affectionately. He was a remarkable child; highly intelligent, curious, mature for his age, well-spoken, and astonishingly perceptive for a five-year-old. Harry had no doubt that Teddy was going to do incredible things when he grew up, but a part of him selfishly wanted Teddy to stay young and carefree for as long as possible.

Abruptly, Teddy pulled him into a hug. Harry wrapped his arms fully around the child as the latter buried his face in his shoulder. "Be safe, Dad," he said in a muffled voice.

A fist seemed to clench around Harry's heart, and he tightened his embrace ever so slightly, blinking back sudden tears. On the one hand, the knowledge that Teddy saw him as his true father made him feel happier than he had been in years, as though every terrible thing he'd seen and done had been worth it just to hear those words. On the other hand, graduating from godfather to father brought a hammer blow of grief, as though the truth of Remus and Tonks's deaths had until that moment been nothing more than a horrible rumor being spread by gossip mongers that was now being confirmed by the one person who would never say it if it wasn't true. The phoenix inside him sang a low, keening note of lament, and Harry forced himself back to the present.

"I'll be fine, Ted, I promise."

Teddy gave a shallow nod into his shoulder before leaning away and saying the words before he could. "Love you, Dad."

Harry kissed the top of his godson - no his son's - forehead. "Love you too, Ted."

Then he was gently disentangling himself and getting to his feet. He forced his legs to carry him forward, past an approaching Mordo, and looked back for only a moment before opening the large doors with a flick of his finger. The room beyond was distorted by the presence of a faint, golden haze that hung across the threshold like a veil. The last thing he saw of the New York Sanctum was Mordo guiding a forlorn Teddy away from the doors.

The portal rippled in Harry's wake, and he felt as if he were passing through a paper-thin curtain of water. A moment later he found himself standing in a darkened stone chamber with a high, domed ceiling decorated in dark navy blues and dotted with glittering white dots, forming a titillating replica of the night sky.

At the center of the room rose a stone plinth, the Eye of Agamotto perched in a metal cradle at the top. Floating directly above the plinth and its deceptively innocent-looking contents was the true centerpiece of the chamber: a great stone orb large enough to engulf a man, fashioned into an exact replica of the Earth, dotted with miniscule lights, protrusions, and indentations representing cities, rivers, forests, mountain ranges, and other details. Sparsely scattered across the giant globe were the occasional red dots, indicating trouble spots that the sorcerers would have to deal with. Even as he watched, two of the red dots flared and vanished.

The chamber wasn't empty. The three Sanctum Masters, Drumm, Rama, and Minoru, stood in front of the doors to each of the Sanctums under their watch, while the Ancient One herself stood before an archway that led into the Kamar Taj library. The Sanctum Masters were all staring at the Ancient One with varying degrees of trepidation on their faces, as though she had told them she was planning to summon a demon from Mephisto's realm for a cup of tea. Seeing him, the Ancient One, who was dressed in black robes today, immediately dismissed her audience with a wordless gesture of her head.

Harry frowned as he stepped aside to let Daniel Drumm pass. The old sorceress was up to something, and the other Masters didn't like it. That wasn't surprising. Barely a day went by when someone didn't question the Ancient One's strange choices, never mind how successful she had been in defending the world for the last seven centuries. Then again, given her reputation and the things she learned from her visions when she used the Eye of Agamotto, it was no wonder. As the Sorcerer Supreme and the wielder of the Time Stone, the Ancient One measured the consequences of her actions not in years but in lifetimes and made strategic moves so complex that her peers wouldn't understand what she was up to or what her ultimate goal was until long after the fact. She played cosmic chess with eldritch abominations, demons, and dark gods for a living, and she could not afford to become predictable.

The Sanctum doors closed behind the retreating Masters with a softness that belied their great size and weight, and Harry descended the small step down into the chamber. The Ancient One was gazing past him, her eyes unfocused, as if her thoughts had taken her somewhere far away. He didn't bother trying to get her attention. Her ruminations and the actions that sprung from them had global or even galactic consequences, and if she deemed her current train of thought more important than speaking to him, then it almost certainly was. She would speak to him when she was ready; no sooner, no later. Fortunately, the Ancient One didn't keep him waiting for long, shaking her head like a wet dog.

"How have you been?" she asked.

As always, Harry appreciated her politeness and her sincerity. He hadn't seen her in person in over three months, and it would have been rather off putting to get down to business right off the bat. "I've been alright. The shop is scheduled to open in two weeks, and Teddy's managed to convince all his friends to drag their parents to the grand opening."

The Ancient One quirked a smile that was somehow interrogative. "You still haven't told me what sort of shop it is. The suspense is killing me."

Harry almost rolled his eyes at the tiny inside joke. Ever since the revelation that her days were numbered, the Ancient One had taken to jesting about her own impending demise when Harry was present. Many of the sorcerers had assumed this meant she'd foreseen that Harry would save her life and extend her reign as Sorcerer Supreme by another few centuries, and it had taken a great deal of self-control on his part to refrain from correcting them. "Are you really telling me that you haven't caught it in a vision?"

The Ancient One shrugged. "Maybe I have and simply didn't recognize it." She tilted her head in apparent contemplation. "Or perhaps I'm simply pulling your leg by pretending not to know so that you won't have to lie to Teddy and he can claim it as a surprise when I stop by."

Harry did roll his eyes then. He had a suspicion that was exactly what she was doing, but he knew better than to think she would ever confirm or deny it. "Right, that's enough of me trying to figure out how much you actually know. Your message was a bit urgent."

The Ancient One nodded and gestured at the Orb of Agamotto floating above. As Harry watched, she turned a series of concealed dials built into the altar underneath, her eyes fixed on a peculiar green dot on the shores of a lake in eastern Canada that came into view as the stone globe rotated in response. Harry had on a few occasions used the Orb himself and knew immediately that something was different. While green dots were not in themselves unusual, this one seemed to pulse on and off like an object being pinged by radar. That was most definitely not normal. "What is that?" he asked, because he could sense he was meant to.

The Ancient One looked rather grim. "That is what, or rather who, you need to track down. How familiar are you with the Culver University incident?"

Harry took a moment to gather his thoughts. Just under two months earlier, several news outlets had reported a major accident occurring in the labs at Culver University in Willowdale, Virginia. Initial reports had described a "green sasquatch" that was supposedly created by a radiation experiment gone awry before going on a destructive rampage and vanishing. Almost immediately, however, all reports of a monster being responsible for considerable damage done to the university's largest research lab and surrounding areas were retracted. The new story held that the damage was in fact caused by a series of chemical explosions, complete with fumes that caused hallucinations in those who inhaled them. Almost immediately Harry had suspected a government cover up, a sentiment shared by virtually everyone who commented on the story, but he'd decided to refrain from investigating or interfering. The entire debacle was most certainly non-magical in nature, and he was following the Ancient One's advice to avoid interfering in mundane affairs until it became absolutely necessary. Clearly, this incident was more significant than he'd realized if she was going back on that advice now.

When Harry recounted all of this, the Ancient One glanced at the Eye of Agamotto. "Well, you're right that it's a non-magical issue," she said, "and while it doesn't affect us now, this green giant is going to play a major role in events that determine the fate of the world in the next few years. That was inevitable even before your arrival."

"So, this is one of those things that was going to happen anyway that I accelerated?" Harry asked.

"Yes, but now we have an opportunity to communicate with him we wouldn't have had in the timelines where you weren't present. Or rather, we have you to do the communication for us."

Harry frowned. "Why me, specifically?"

The Ancient One smiled knowingly. "Because you and he have something in common."

If she had said that before he'd bonded with the Phoenix Force and been forced to master his emotions, Harry would have gaped at her. Instead he simply blinked and said "What."

"The Culver University accident somehow turned this man," the Ancient One conjured a one-quarter life size image of an unassuming, mild-featured man with dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and the pale skin tone of someone who didn't get enough sunlight, "into this creature." The man's image was replaced by that of a large, green-skinned humanoid that reminded Harry of a forest troll, with gigantic, unnaturally developed muscles, greenish black hair, and luminous green eyes. A pair of severely stretched pants barely preserved his decency, and his face was set in an expression of primal fury. The creature could not have looked more different from the almost wispy-looking scientist, and not for the first time Harry wondered whether the universe had its own strange, slightly twisted sense of humor.

"Surely he doesn't look like that all the time," he said. "He would have been all over the news wherever he went."

The Ancient One nodded. "It's not permanent in the sense that he is still usually his regular human self. But if he gets angry or distraught, he transforms into a beast of truly tremendous strength and childlike intelligence, fueled almost entirely by primal rage. You can imagine how dangerous he is when that happens."

"What's his name?"

"Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, though he prefers to go by Bruce or Dr. Banner. He thinks himself a monster now. Part of his ongoing struggle will be learning to reconcile with and control his alter ego. He has the potential to be a force for great good."

"He transforms when he gets angry…" Harry muttered. "So, he has to learn emotional control techniques. Like how I have to meditate to control the Phoenix?"

"Precisely."

"You want me to play meditation instructor to a man who'll turn into the jolly green giant's evil twin the second he loses his temper?"

"Essentially, yes. You have to admit, your situations are quite similar. The biggest difference is that it takes a lot more to make you lose control than it would to draw out the Hulk, but the Hulk, while exceptionally dangerous in his own right, pales in comparison to a Dark Phoenix."

"The Hulk?" Harry interjected mildly.

The Ancient One chuckled. "It's what the media will most likely end up calling him. A bit silly, perhaps, but appropriate."

Studying the illusory image of the creature, Harry had to agree. "Anything special I need to know before I set out?"

The Ancient One looked thoughtful. "Dr. Banner hates his alter ego. His mental health will deteriorate the more he struggles with it, but he is a shy, kind man and a scientist at heart. Your Phoenix powers are still developing, and in your current state you just barely surpass him, so he'll be a formidable opponent if it comes to that. If you can knock him unconscious, he'll revert back into Banner, but that is exceptionally difficult. The more you fight back the more frustrated he gets, and the angrier he gets, the stronger he becomes. The Hulk is virtually immune to all forms of conventional attack, and only certain forms of magic will affect him. Telepathic attacks are… inadvisable, but if successfully executed they are highly effective. You have a special advantage there, but it's a double-edged sword. If his anger bleeds into your mind…"

Harry nodded sharply, in full understanding of the risk she implied. "I don't think I'm taking that route."

"You won't cause him enough stress to induce a transformation, but he already has enemies," the Ancient One warned, "and they are as reckless as they are ruthless."

"Wonderful," Harry grumbled. "I have to negotiate with a were-troll who will transform the instant a bunch of faceless, trigger happy government soldiers show up to cart him off. Anything else?"

"No, I don't think so." The Ancient One sounded highly amused. "You can use the Orb to track him down. Good luck."

Harry sighed. "This is going to be so much fun."

The Ancient One cackled.

_Michipicoten Park, Ontario, near the Canadian shore of Lake Superior, July of 2003_

Bruce Banner was having a very bad day. He had hitch hiked along the road for days, but his most recent ride had turned out to belong to a serial killer who feigned engine trouble as an excuse to strand him in the middle of nowhere and tried to stab him, only to get the Other Guy's fist to the face for his trouble. Bruce had ended up reverting several miles north.

Now he was alone, wearing nothing but tattered pants that barely preserved his decency, walking barefoot along a Canadian interprovincial highway. He was a fugitive from his own country, responsible for several deaths courtesy of the Other Guy, and the military wanted to use him as a weapon of mass destruction. He was covered in itching welts from insect bites, he was sweating bullets, thirsty, tired, and a headache was building in his forehead.

Trees covered in deep green leaves grew on either side of the road, which reminded Bruce uncomfortably of his violent alter ego. The day was bright and clear, the sky cloudless. Birds chirped to one another, puncturing the silence. As his aching feet carried him past a particularly tall pine tree, the trees to his left fell away to reveal the glittering waters of a glacier-carved lake. It obviously wasn't one of the Great Lakes, for he could see the trees on the other shore quite well.

Bruce all but stumbled towards it and collapsed to his knees, thrusting his hands into the cool water, and splashing his face. His headache faltered somewhat, and his thoughts cleared. As Bruce shook his head and rubbed water out of his eyes, he heard a faint pop behind him and bit back a groan of frustration. What now? he thought. Very slowly he straightened from his crouch, turned around, and felt his jaw drop. A figure was standing in the middle of the road ten feet from him, dressed in clothes unlike anything Bruce had ever seen.

The figure was about six feet tall, well proportioned, and, judging from the broad shoulders and narrow waist, male. Bruce couldn't be completely certain, though, because the figure's face was concealed by the unnaturally long shadow created by the cowl of his outfit, which looked like something straight out of a renaissance festival. Made from dark green cloth, it consisted of a long sleeve tunic, trousers, soft black boots, and a cloak that fell to the ankles. Its shirt and black leather belt were decorated with gold accents, and a gold pendant in the shape of a long-tailed bird with its wings stretched to either side hung from a chain around its neck.

"Sorry if I startled you, Dr. Banner," the figure said. It had a masculine voice. A man, then. "I considered leaving a trail of clues for you to follow, but in your current state I doubt you'd appreciate any sort of deception or mystery, no matter how benign. You look like you're having a really bad day."

Bruce scowled. "Gee, what gave it away? The insect bites, the ripped pants, or the lack of shoes? And what's it to you? Who are you?" Bruce realized he was getting angry. He could hear the Other Guy stirring in the back of his head, and he forced himself to calm down. Whoever this weirdo was, he hadn't actually done anything to him yet, and the idea of being responsible for another death today, no matter the reason, made Bruce feel sick to his stomach.

The cloaked stranger waited until it was clear Bruce wasn't going to say anything else before he responded. "What I am is… complicated. And knowing who I am can be dangerous for you, hence the getup."

Bruce snorted derisively. "I didn't get seven PhDs by being stupid. You're here because of the Other Guy. I'm already in plenty of danger right now, never mind knowing your secret identity. If you're some hotshot secret agent who thinks they can get the drop on me, think again. I'm sure you saw what happened to the last person who tried."

"You're not the only one around here who gets dangerous when they're angry, Dr. Banner," the cloaked man said quietly.

To Bruce, the words sounded like an iceberg; they gave away just enough to be a warning, but their true importance was far deeper and more complex than he could possibly imagine. "Alright," he said cautiously, "let's say I believe you. Why are you here? What do you want from me?"

The stranger moved, sat down by the edge of the lake, and motioned for Bruce to join him. After a moment Bruce did so, sighing. The stranger did nothing for a long moment. Then, very slowly, he reached up with both hands and removed his cowl. Bruce felt himself relax, and he took a moment to study the man's expressionless face. He was young, probably no more than twenty, with light skin, messy black hair that stuck up in all directions, and emerald green eyes. On his forehead, just above his right eyebrow, the stranger's skin was marred by an odd scar that resembled a lightning bolt. The scar was pure white and very thin, which suggested the injury was incredibly old. It was also too neatly shaped to be a battle wound, which in turn likely meant that someone very skilled had carved it deliberately into the man's skin, and Bruce wondered what sort of sick bastard would do that to a child. "I came here because I understand in part what you're going through, and I want to help you," the stranger said, after a moment.

Bruce knit his eyebrows. With the man's face visible, it was as if a veil had been lifted from Bruce's mind and he could detect a pronounced British accent that hadn't been there before. "You want to help me, or did somebody send you to help me?"

The stranger's lip twitched. "A bit of both, I think. When I see a situation deteriorate, I can't stop myself from jumping in and doing whatever I can to help. My friend called it my saving people thing. Even if I hadn't been told about your situation and instructed to offer you help, I would have found out on my own and done it myself at some point."

"Someone knew to send you to me? How? The only sign of my presence is a smashed car a few miles back, and this is the Canadian wilderness. No one should be able to find it for a long while."

"If you accept the offer, I'll show you," The stranger said. His voice was soft and barely inflected, as though there was almost no emotion behind his words. Bruce recalled the man's warning that he was dangerous when he got angry, and he wondered how horrible it would have to be that the man spoke so tonelessly. Would it be bad enough to give the Other Guy a run for his money? Bruce realized he wasn't sure, and that frightened him more than he'd expected.

Bruce hated the Other Guy, but he had to admit he had started to become accustomed to the feeling of physical invincibility that it provided. In some sense he had found twisted comfort in the fact that nothing out there could hurt him anymore, at least not physically. His fear was of the source of that invincibility and what it could do if it were unleashed. He really was a monster.

"I need some assurance that you aren't pulling my leg," Bruce said. "How about this. Be honest with me and I'll give you a chance. If you don't want to tell me something just say it, and don't dance around the truth. Easy enough?"

The stranger nodded. "Of course." His blank face became thoughtful, and he leaned back, bracing himself against the ground with his hands. "I was… different from regular people ever since the day I was born. I inherited certain abilities from my parents, and I spent many years learning to master them. My powers could be dangerous, but they were neither good nor bad, and with a bit of training they became downright convenient to have. They were a blessing, really." He reached up with one hand and held it out in front of him. A few leaves tore themselves free from the branches of the nearest tree and whirled around above his open palm, forming patterns that were far too intricate and synchronized to be natural, spinning and flipping and dancing until at last they organized themselves into a v formation and soared away like a flock of birds.

Bruce felt his eyes widen. Telekinesis? Was this man responsible for saving that doomed passenger jet in Nepal two years ago? As the thought crossed Bruce's mind, he realized that the stranger wasn't actually sitting on the ground. Instead, he sat in midair an inch or two above the pebbled shore of the lake, legs crossed like a child, his cloak fluttering softly around him.

"When I was twenty, something very bad happened," the cloaked man went on. "I was no stranger to loss, never have been, but that day stands out as probably the worst of my life. In less than a minute everyone I knew or cared about was dead save for one, and the only reason the two of us survived was because of something that fundamentally changed the nature of my powers. We barely escaped with our lives and our sanity, but everything was different after that day. My powers became orders of magnitude stronger than before. I can do things now that I shouldn't be able to do for another ten years, or do things that should be impossible altogether, even for others like me, and I can exert those abilities on a scale that my peers could only dream of. But there's a cost.

"My powers are extremely volatile now. They've taken on a life of their own, and they don't react well to strong emotions. The more I feel, the more energy I unleash. And the more energy I release that way, the stronger the emotion gets. It's a vicious cycle of power and feelings that feed on each other, and if I let myself get caught up in it I could transform into a monster that makes your big green alter ego look like a four year old throwing a tantrum in comparison."

Bruce considered the words, weighed them against the demonstration with the leaves and the passenger jet incident, and found himself nodding in agreement. "Has that ever happened? "he asked carefully. "Have you ever lost control?"

The stranger shook his head. "I've come close, dangerously close, but no. Trust me, if I lost control, you'd know it no matter how far away you are, and we'd all be lucky if whatever country I'm in at the time is the only one wiped off the map before I'm put down. Assuming that I'm stopped before I get too powerful to be put down, of course." The green-eyed stranger looked directly at Bruce, and his eyes seemed to glow. "That's the biggest difference between our situations, you know. If you lose control, you can still change back, and you would leave survivors. In the same position, I can do neither."

Bruce felt a chill creep its way up his back, reminiscent of the feelings of awe and terror he'd gotten when he saw a volcano erupt, and he shivered. "How do you manage it?"

"I have a... teacher. She's the one that sent me to you. If anyone can help you, she can." The man spoke with utter conviction. As Bruce considered it, he found himself doing some quick mental math. The man's powers had changed two years ago…

"The incident that changed you, does it have anything to do with the Event?"

The stranger blinked. "You could say that. The Event, as you call it, was a side effect."

Bruce was silent for several minutes. The man had told his story as honestly as he could without revealing any personal details, and Bruce could see the similarities between their situations. There were several glaring differences, of course, but the spark of kinship had been lit, and he could not quench it. So, he opened his mouth and began to speak.

"I wasn't born with special abilities, except for my big brain. I specialize in nuclear physics, but I still got myself seven PhDs because I thought, well, why not? The more you know, and all that. Looking back, I think I let my smarts make me arrogant. When a decorated general in the US army approached me about creating a serum that would give humans resistance to diseases and immunity to radiation poisoning, I thought sure, bring it on. I never stopped to think, never questioned that there was something deeper, that something less altruistic was going on behind the scenes. General Ross didn't approach me because he wanted to create some kind of radiation vaccine. He was hoping to replicate the super soldier serum that created Captain America."

Bruce laughed mirthlessly, ignoring his companion's raised eyebrows. "I never would have agreed to work for him if I knew the truth," he went on. "I've read the reports of how far people were willing to go to recreate that damned serum, and I swore to never go down that road. But there I was, duped into it by my own arrogance. Ross went to me because he was convinced that I could replicate that magic combination of chemicals and radiation, and I was so caught up in the discoveries I was making that I got carried away. I figured that gamma radiation was the key, and I prepared a primer formula based on the theory. Everything was almost ready for the final stages of testing. Then I got a memo from Ross saying that funding for the project had run dry, and since I couldn't produce any concrete results, he wasn't going to do anything about it.

"I got mad. More than a year of hard work getting tossed down the drain without so much as a by your leave by the very man who'd gotten me into it. I wanted to prove him wrong. More than that, though, I wanted to impress him. So, I subjected myself to the procedure. Took the primer and tried to test it with a modified x-ray machine. Something went wrong, I don't know what, and next thing I knew I was being drenched in enough gamma rays to make a nuclear bomb look like a day at the beach. And the Other Guy was born. He tore up the university and hurt more people than I can remember, including my sort-of-girlfriend, and Ross loved it. He told me everything, and then he informed me that I was going to be the United States' newest weapon of mass destruction. I took exception to that and, well, you seem to know the rest." Bruce realized he had tears in his eyes, and he put his head in his hands.

The two men sat in silence after that, each digesting what the other had said.

"Harry," the cloaked man said.

Bruce looked up. "What?"

"That's my name. Harry-" the words were cut off by the sounds of an approaching car engine that made them both jump. Bruce looked down the road and felt his blood run cold.

A group of camouflage patterned all-terrain vehicles was approaching at speeds that would give a police officer heart palpitations, machine guns mounted on top and piloted by men in dark green and brown uniforms.

Ross had found him. Found _both_ of them.

…

Harry was on his feet and had his face covered by the cowl of his cloak almost before he knew it. The cowl and the shadow it cast were both illusions and utterly insubstantial, ensuring that they hid his identity without obstructing his sight. Reaching out with senses he hadn't had before merging with the Phoenix he felt the approach of two dozen vehicles on the ground, four choppers a kilometer out, and more than a hundred soldiers, all of them men.

One of the presences in the helicopters stirred something up inside him. It was a surge of instant, almost primal dislike. With a tingle of alarm, he realized the distaste came not from him, but from the Phoenix itself.

That was a first.

As a general rule Harry avoided peeking into other people's minds unless it was absolutely necessary to his or Teddy's health and safety, but in a potentially dangerous situation involving shady soldiers and a twitchy scientist who was liable to tear everyone present limb from limb if pressed, all bets were off. What he found made him clench his fist until his knuckles whitened.

The Phoenix had every reason to feel disdainful of Brigadier General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross.

The man's thoughts reminded Harry simultaneously of Rufus Scrimgeour and John Dawlish; an old military man hardened and honed by the things he had seen in the line of duty, but in all of the wrong ways. Where war had taught Harry the value of life and given him a greater appreciation for such things as loyalty, love, trust, and courage, Ross had emerged from his campaigns overseas with a superiority complex that led him to believe he was much smarter than he actually was, an almost fanatical devotion to upholding the military might of the United States no matter the cost, a disregard for the opinions of those who disagreed with him, an obsession with superhumans, and a subconscious craving for power and personal glory that had long since overridden any moral or ethical considerations.

Ross was a political time bomb. Worse, he had the connections to get away with just about anything, up to and including the wide-ranging collateral damage he was all too willing to cause in his pursuit of Dr. Banner.

Harry widened his mental probe out into a net, scanning every mind in the vicinity. He had to ascertain the mental states of Ross's soldiers and determine whether or not there were civilians nearby. He widened his mental net until it was so large that no normal Legilimens would have been able to replicate it, but when he brushed the thoughts of Dr. Banner he recoiled.

Banner's mind was awash in conflict. On the surface the good doctor struggled to maintain calm equilibrium, but deep down lay an emerald green storm of anger and fear that gnawed doggedly at the man's self-control. The tempest seemed to have a voice of its own, a voice that was shouting and clawing at the remainder of Banner's consciousness, yearning to rise from the depths and assume control. It wanted to fight, to flee, to escape, to do so many things, and it couldn't decide which course of action to take because its host was forcing it to remain trapped and restricted. Banner's mind was already a battlefield, and Harry reflexively withdrew his telepathic probes, unwilling to bring the Phoenix into prolonged contact with the rising storm of negative emotion. Even so, his head pounded with the aftershocks of touching that maelstrom, and he wondered how Banner was still sane. Harry knew he could quickly overpower the mental storm if he was standing in front of the man and concentrating with all his might on that one task, but attempting it in this situation bordered on suicidal.

The choppers came to hover fifty feet above, mimicking the semicircular formation of the armored Humvees on the ground. Wary of trigger-happy soldiers who might open fire against orders, Harry set up a shield in front of Banner that would block anything short of a bunker buster missile.

"Get on the ground and put your hands on your heads, now, or you will be fired upon!" the megaphone amplified voice of Thaddeus Ross rang out. "You are under arrest for acts of sedition against the United States of America. You have the right to-"

"Oh, shut up!" Harry snapped, a nonverbal _Sonorus_ charm amplifying his voice to such a volume he drowned out the megaphone and made several of those nearest him, including Bruce, wince and cover their ears. It occurred to him that Bruce was barely decent in his torn and stretched pants, but Harry did not dare conjure new clothes for him where Ross could see him. He was already putting a target on his back with his telekinetic abilities, and he wanted to keep the existence of his various other powers a secret for as long as possible. At the same time, Harry felt certain that he'd forgotten something important, but what? "This is Canada, as you very well know," he continued, setting aside his concern. "You Americans have no right to arrest anyone here, and even if you did, why are you arresting me? What have I done to you? I'm a complete unknown in this situation, and you're not even giving me a chance to so much as back away from the suspect. What if I was a diplomat?"

Ross was so shocked at this outburst that it took him a moment to close his mouth. "Don't bother with the slippery lawyer talk, freak, you'll just embarrass yourself with your own ignorance," he shot back at last. "This is the real world, not some safe little bubble of pen pushers and fancy word play. You will be placed under arrest along with your friend Banner and interrogated about why you're consorting with a known fugitive. Then you're going to prison, where you and all of your ilk belong."

Harry felt something snap inside him. Nothing and no one had ever tested his temper like this since his classes with Umbridge, and anger such as he hadn't felt in years was making its presence known, helped along by the fact that he was still smarting from his foray into Banner's mind. He wrestled with the emotion, refusing to let it feed the burning Phoenix even as he let it bleed into his next words.

"You dishonor your position and your country General Ross," he said in a voice cold enough to freeze the Sahara at high noon. An exertion of telekinesis made the air swirl around him like a pale imitation of a tornado. Harry rose into the sky until he was level with the choppers and looked Ross directly in the eye. "Listen well, all of you. You have no right, none at all, to be here or to detain me, and if you truly believe you can subdue Dr. Banner then you're kidding yourselves. Regardless, he is under my protection, and if you attempt to harm or detain him, I will stop you with whatever amount of force I see fit. Leave now, or you will be made to leave."

Jaws dropped and eyes widened all around. Ross gaped for a moment, then raised his megaphone again. "I don't take orders from you, and you're a fool to defend Banner." He paused for breath, probably preparing more threats, but Harry had no interest in hearing him prattle on as Umbridge had to the centaurs so many years earlier. A swift motion of his left hand made the device fling itself out of Ross's hands and shatter, raining pieces of plastic and broken metal down onto the road without actually injuring anyone. At the same time, a trio of waterspouts as thick around as shipping containers erupted from the lake, growing until they towered high over the scene.

"That was a warning," Harry said calmly, ignoring the shouts of alarm elicited by his display of power. The odd feeling that he'd forgotten something persisted. Ross was looking at him as if he were a bear that had devoured his Christmas turkey; furious, but too terrified to act on it. "None of us are going to like what will happen if you insist on starting a fight you can't win, but it will doubtlessly end worse for you than it would for us. Leave. _Now_."

For a long, tense moment, no one moved. Harry allowed his waterspouts to sink back down into the lake, sending giant ripples across its surface. He stared impassively at Ross and his soldiers.

Ross looked from Harry to Banner, to his soldiers, then to Banner again, and finally back to Harry, his face utterly blank. He pulled a corded walkie talkie from his belt. He thumbed the activation button and opened his mouth to speak. For a moment, it seemed he might actually listen to reason. Then he adopted a truly murderous expression and said something into the device that Harry could not hear.

And shots rang out.

At that moment, Harry belatedly realized what important detail he'd forgotten. Banner didn't know about the shield protecting him, and there was no Silencing Charm to muffle the sound of gunshots, which meant that the soldier's shots would stress him badly enough to induce a transformation regardless of whether they actually struck. Sure enough, Bruce jumped nearly three feet into the air, stumbled on landing, and gave a horrible groan. Harry tried to send him a telepathic command to sleep, but the primal fury rising up inside the scientist refused to be silenced so easily, and Harry let out a weak grunt as if he had been physically struck, involuntarily ending the mental contact.

A witch or wizard from Harry's old world might have thought Banner had drunk a bad Polyjuice potion.

As Harry watched in mounting horror, the scientist's skin began to turn green. His veins darkened until they stood out like an infestation of worms, his muscles bulged and warped, his bones popped and cracked, and his pants stretched until the only thing stopping them from being torn apart and completely exposing the creature's body was a quick application of a Stretching Charm. In seconds Bruce Banner's almost painfully ordinary form was replaced by a nine-foot tall caricature of a bodybuilder. Its skin was the color of freshly mown grass, stretched by unnervingly large slabs of muscle, yet the overall shape was humanoid, and its face was almost identical to Bruce's but for the odd color and the feral look in its eyes.

The similarity to a werewolf transformation wasn't lost on Harry, and he realized with a pang that Remus and the doctor would have gotten along famously in both of their forms. As he wrapped himself in a Shield Charm, Banner's alter ego gave a deafening roar, and Harry was fairly certain he was the only person present who didn't flinch.

Next second, the green giant had leaped into the formation of Humvees, crashing through the shield Harry had set up earlier as if it were made of paper, and lashing out with his giant fists and feet to smash everything in reach, sending armored vehicles, along with their unfortunate occupants, flying through the air.

When Harry reached out with telekinesis, his goal was to protect, rather than attack. The soldiers' yells of pain and terror became squeals of surprise as they, and the vehicles that were milliseconds away from becoming their tombs, flew into the air. The loud cracks of gunfire filled the air, but Banner's monstrous form ignored the shots, which failed to so much as draw blood, and continued its rampage.

The chopper containing Ross turned its attention to Harry, spraying his invisible shield with bullets as long as his own feet, but the drain on the shield's energy was so negligible that Harry barely noticed. Instead Harry focused on moving the soldiers out of Banner's reach, a task that was growing increasingly difficult. The beast wasn't just strong; he was fast. Harry himself was no slouch in the speed department even by magical standards, but Banner was moving quickly enough to leave a Firebolt in the dust.

Realizing that adrenaline was clouding his thoughts, Harry forced himself to focus and adjusted his tactics. He scanned for and took control of the Humvees themselves, all two dozen of them, and pulled them into the sky out of Banner's reach. It was a distinctly odd sight, armored vehicles hanging in midair as if suspended by invisible strings, flying in precise patterns that prevented them from colliding with each other or the helicopters. Harry set them down on an empty spot two miles down the road. A loud growl brought his attention back to the nearer stretch of roadway.

With the space around him suddenly empty of victims, Banner's troll-like form had turned his glare on the helicopters and on Harry himself. Wary of the potential jumping power of those leg muscles, Harry took hold of the choppers and began dragging them to the far side of the lake. Unfortunately, he was interrupted when Banner leaped into the air, aiming for the one containing Ross himself.

The green giant collided with the bottom of the chopper. As they twisted and tumbled through the air in a harrowing descent for the lake, time seemed to come to a standstill, and Harry was gripped by indecision. On the one hand, the things he'd glimpsed in Thaddeus Ross's mind were vile enough that he would like nothing more than to let the were-troll turn the old war monger into jelly. On the other hand, Harry had a feeling Dr. Banner would feel incredibly guilty about any deaths he caused while transformed. Even if Banner didn't care either way, the soldiers aboard that chopper didn't deserve to die because of their fool of a commanding officer.

Ignoring the Phoenix's urging to let Ross crash and drown, Harry yanked the distressed helicopter out of the Hulk's grip, tearing off the landing skids in the process, and sent it to a gentle landing on the far side of the lake. At the same time, he blasted Banner with a wave of telekinetic force. It sent him hurtling through the air for over a mile before he finally slammed into the forest, smashing a furrow through the trees until he skidded to a stop at the shore of another small lake.

Two of the remaining three choppers flew after Banner. To Harry's astonishment (and irritation), the last one immediately opened fire on him. Bullets and tiny rockets smashed uselessly into his shield, filling the air with smoke and a deafening cacophony of cracks and booms. Harry supposed he could understand the soldier's panic, but he was trying to save them from their own stupidity, and it irked him that this was how they responded. He was reminded uncomfortably of the wizarding world, of its fickle opinion of him throughout his school years.

Harry forced himself to refocus on the present. He felt his way through the stream of deadly projectiles and made a telekinetic grab for his attacker. The chopper groaned as its propeller motors crushed themselves into powder. Only Harry's will ensured that it set down safely at the edge of the road.

Harry recalled the Ancient One's warnings as he soared off in Banner's direction.

At this stage, Harry just barely surpassed the Hulk in terms of raw power, and the latter's ability to grow stronger the angrier he became made that difference even smaller. There was no way he could defeat Banner's troll-like firm with telekinesis alone while simultaneously protecting bystanders, but the situation wasn't dire enough to warrant the risk of using more complex magic. Somehow, he had to get himself and Banner away from here. As this thought crossed his mind, Harry found himself hovering two hundred feet above the forest canopy, looking down at the increasingly one-sided battle between the last of Ross's choppers and Banner's enraged form.

The green man ripped a tree outside of the ground and threw it at one of the choppers with surprising accuracy, but Harry cut it in half before it could smash the cockpit. Then he made a sharp gesture with his right arm that dragged both of the flying vehicles sideways through the air. Before Harry could send them more than a quarter mile away, however, he was interrupted by a second tree that was hurtling at his face like a spear. Caught by surprise, Harry let go of the helicopters in his haste to redirect the tree so that it sailed past him harmlessly.

As the tree arced through the sky and began falling back to earth, the green giant tensed his legs for a leap. _No_, Harry thought. _Surely, he can't!_ But the green man could. The sheer force of his legs propelling him upward pulverized the ground beneath his feet as he shot up toward Harry like the cork of a well-shaken champagne bottle.

Harry didn't bother with a shield. Instead he made a shoving motion with both hands, and an invisible force caught the Hulk in midair, momentarily freezing him in place with inches to spare. Harry gritted his teeth with the effort of fighting the Hulk's titanic strength, but in the air the latter had no leverage, which gave Harry the advantage. In seconds, the green giant was sent slamming back into the ground with twice the force he'd used to take off, kicking up a great cloud of dust. Harry panted from the effort, and he decided to conserve energy by descending to a spot twenty meters from where his opponent hit the ground.

As Harry descended, he saw something that momentarily replaced his mounting irritation with guilty amusement. Banner's head and shoulders were trapped in the ground while the rest of him stuck out, and he was struggling to pull himself free despite the lack of leverage, so that he looked like a character from one of the cartoons Teddy liked to watch.

In his troll-like form, however, Banner's muscles were orders of magnitude stronger than the world's largest excavation machines. In seconds he'd pulverized the dirt in which he was buried just by thrashing, and he planted his palms on the ground to leverage his head free.

Harry's faint amusement evaporated. "Banner, calm down!" he shouted, though he doubted it would work. "I am not your enemy, but I can't let you hurt anyone else. You need to control yourself."

"No puny Banner!" The creature that would one day be called the Hulk bellowed, looking even angrier than before. Harry stared at him in genuine astonishment. Was the beast a separate identity sharing a body with Dr. Banner? If so, how was he already self-aware? According to the Ancient One the Hulk's mind was a childlike and emotionally unstable offshoot of its host, hardly capable of abstract thought. Then again, most of what she knew about Banner and the Hulk would have come from possible futures glimpsed via the Time Stone, so it made sense that she didn't know everything about him, just as she hadn't known everything about Harry when she scanned for his future before meeting him for the first time.

Harry's musings were interrupted by the second uprooted pine tree the Hulk sent hurtling toward him at breakneck speed. As before he motioned to one side with his right hand, and the tree veered away from him to slam into the branches of those behind. If the Hulk was unnerved or intimidated by the repeated displays of weird power, he showed no evidence of it, for he yanked yet another tree from the Earth and held it cradled in his arms like a lance. With a roar he charged.

Unwilling to cause needless additional damage to the forest, Harry opted not to summon any trees of his own. Instead he took hold of the Hulk's leafy lance and twisted it in his grip, pulling the creature off balance so that he tripped and fell on his face. The tree flew into the air and came to rest above Harry's head, floating parallel to the ground. Harry let the Hulk scramble to his feet before slamming it into his neck.

The Hulk's angry bellow was cut off and he scrabbled at the tree as it shoved him backward. His feet made gouges in the dirt as they struggled uselessly to anchor him to the ground until, at last, he managed to get a grip on the tree trunk and promptly ripped it in half like a sheet of paper. He threw each piece at Harry, one after the other, but Harry diverted them to either side of himself.

Ascending, Harry imagined a pair of manacles wrapping themselves around the Hulk's ankles being yanked backward by chains. Caught by surprise, the Hulk was upended from his spot and landed on his back. Harry wasted not a moment. Twisting through the air until he hovered directly above the Hulk, he took a deep breath and thrust out with both hands, palms parallel to the ground.

Instantly the green man was pinned under an invisible wall of energy as heavy as a mountain, slowly forcing him deep into the ground and cratering it around him. The Hulk's cries of protest were muffled by the telekinetic barrier, which was thickening the air until it was as dense as granite. The creature's colossal strength made the task much more difficult than it ought to have been, as though Harry were attempting to force a balloon full of helium to stay underwater with one hand. Unconsciously Harry descended, devoting all of his energy to containing the Hulk. He raised his hand, the incantation of a Full Body Bind Curse forming in his mind.

It should have ended there. In an ideal world, Harry would have bound the Hulk with his immobilization spell, forced him to revert back into Banner, and gotten him to the safety of Kamar Taj, leaving Ross in the dust. Unfortunately, Harry's infamously fickle 'luck' had other ideas. He was concentrating so hard on his task that he barely had enough spare energy to curse the Hulk, leaving none with which to shield himself or watch for other enemies. Naturally, he paid a painful price for his inattention. His spell was only a syllable away from completion when everything went wrong.

Something hard struck Harry in the back and exploded, sending him tumbling to the ground. Ears ringing, gripped by agony, Harry crashed through the forest's understory until he hit the earth with what would have been bone-breaking force for a normal person. As he spat foliage out of his mouth, Harry was devoutly thankful he'd had the foresight to imbue his entire outfit with protective charms in imitation of Fred and George's shield cloaks and hats, because he was certain that without them he'd have been killed, or at least forced into a healing coma. As it was, he'd be covered in bruises for the next few days. Getting to his feet with a groan, he rubbed his ears without touching them until they stopped ringing and glanced around.

To one side Harry saw the Hulk charging him like an angry bull elephant. To the other he saw military Humvees slogging through the dense underbrush. Clearly, they hadn't stayed where Harry had set them down earlier, and they had standing orders to fight, orders they had no choice but to obey, whether they wanted to or not. Above, the last two helicopters approached with weapons blazing. Harry cursed Thaddeus Ross in Sanskrit as he raised his arms and summoned a shield. A split second later the world around him exploded. Rockets, bullets, and grenades peppered his defenses, kicking up clouds of dust and smoke, but the barrier didn't waver until the Hulk's gigantic green fist slammed into it.

Harry felt his patience wearing thin. He had had to disappoint Teddy by canceling a trip to Central Park, been sent to befriend a complete stranger whose situation barely paralleled his own, scanned the mind of a war monger who would gladly dissect Teddy in search of the secret to his metamorphosing abilities, been forced to protect said war monger and his minions from their own idiocy when they attacked Banner, gotten shot at for his trouble, and was nursing a headache from the aftershocks of a failed telepathic communication with Banner. As the Hulk's fists pummeled his shield, his frustration turned to anger, and just for a moment that anger touched the Phoenix.

The Phoenix screeched, and Harry's mind _burned_.

Magic exploded from his body as an invisible shockwave of unstoppable force. The Hulk was blasted into the sky and out of sight. Every tree within 200 feet was flattened into splinters. Humvees crumpled in on themselves, producing sickening noises as their unfortunate occupants were crushed. The helicopters careened through the air, their fuselages warped and propeller blades bent, before they crashed into the forest a quarter mile away and exploded. A few miles away, the residents of a small town were disturbed by the thunderous sound of the heatless explosion.

Harry staggered, the Phoenix inside him still crying out in fury, urging him to summon the primal fires of creation, to rain hell down on the forest until there was nothing left but blackened rubble, to turn his enemies to smoldering ash. How dare these self-righteous fools attack him when he was risking his life to protect them from their own idiocy? They did not understand the role he played, how much was riding on his success, what responsibilities he bore. They were not worth saving. _They would BURN!_

_No_, he told it. _Killing these people in anger will only turn me into a monster worse than they could ever be. That's not why I'm here. That's not why I accepted your power!_ Harry struggled to contain the Phoenix fire in his mind, smothering it with icy focus. Then he fed his anger to a new flame, a calm, welcoming speck of warm light like a candle in a meditation sanctuary, burning away the frustration and horror of battle until his mind was clear. His thoughts ordered themselves with mechanical precision.

The Phoenix fell silent.

The sudden shift from enraged to virtually emotionless made Harry feel hollow, like a machine. He took in the devastation he had caused with a clinical, almost calculating eye. He wanted to search for survivors, but a distant roar told him he had bigger problems. Something large and green shot up out of the trees, bounding away from the epicenter of the destruction.

_Oh no you don't_.

In echo of the Hulk's super jumps, Harry launched himself into the sky, smoothing the air in his path to reduce wind resistance. He flew until he was right on top of his quarry, who was descending from the top of the arc of his most recent leap. Taking advantage of the Hulk's vulnerable position, Harry grabbed him without touching him and whirled him about, twisting the creature through the air until he was dizzy before finally shooting him over the landscape. The Hulk flew for miles, bellowing in impudent rage. He landed with a colossal splash in Lake Superior, Harry flying behind him and visible only as a dark green blur.

Harry hovered four meters above the surface of the great lake, watching as Banner's alter ego struggled to float a stone's throw away. Out here there was no one to witness their battle, which meant Harry no longer had to restrict himself to basic telekinesis.

The Hulk thrashed and roared in frustration, clearly unused to the water, and Harry prepared to open a gateway to the Mirror Dimension. He extended his right arm in front of him, opening his palm wide and undulating his fingers slightly even as he concentrated on inverting reality. Harry's natural magical powers already gave him a much greater degree of control over the Mirror Dimension than regular sorcerers, and the addition of the Phoenix Force amplified that talent to the extreme so that reality was like clay to his touch there, but he had never practiced summoning it in the middle of a combat situation, and that oversight cost him.

A deep bellow, a burst of water, and Harry felt something large, heavy, and smelling strongly of stale sweat collide with him, breaking his spell before it was halfway completed and driving the breath from him. His shield buckled and vanished, and it was only an instinctive surge of magic that kept the Hulk's hostile embrace from overwhelming the charms on his clothes and crushing him to jelly as they fell into the lake. Harry thrashed and flailed, still unconsciously augmenting himself. The Hulk was evidently shocked to finally encounter someone as strong as he was, let alone someone a third of his size, because he let go almost instantly.

Too disoriented to apparate, Harry shot away like a torpedo before redirecting his energies to expel the water from his mouth and nose. Nostrils stinging, he made an intricate gesture with the fingers of his left hand and thought _Capit Bulo_! A bubble of fresh air materialized over his face, and he took deep gulps of the self-recycling oxygen. He glanced back the way he'd come and telekinetically pulled himself four meters to the right. The Hulk surged past him, narrowly missing with his massive fist, and Harry stretched out with psychic senses until at last he had rediscovered which way was up. Immediately he flew (was it still flying if he was underwater?) to the surface. The Hulk was close behind, propelling himself at an incredible speed by lashing out with his powerful limbs.

Harry broke the surface of the lake and was a meter out of the water when he felt the Hulk's fist close around his left ankle. Only a quick telekinetic burst ensured the grip was too light to tear off his foot, but the pain told Harry there would be a bruise. Pivoting in midair, Harry pointed a finger down into the lake and shouted "_Glacius_!" All of the water in an area ten square meters across instantly froze. Just as quickly the Hulk tore himself free, scrambling out of the newly created iceberg and leaping at Harry. At this distance, there was no chance of avoiding him.

As the Hulk's fist closed around his torso, time came to a standstill, and Harry's mind was consumed with the certainty that he had to get away. He needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else, and the Phoenix responded. It did not offer him direction, as it had in times past. Instead, it filled Harry with a disconcerting sensation, as though it were enveloping him from the inside out, and he burst into flames.

Together Harry and the Hulk vanished in a flash of fire that collapsed in itself like a singularity.

From Harry's perspective it looked as if the world had flared with colorless light before vanishing into pitch blackness. He felt a tingling sensation in his stomach, as if he were on a broomstick that had gone into a vertical dive, but he felt no wind whip at him in the dark. The Hulk seemed to have frozen, for his grip on Harry did not shift in the slightest. What felt to Harry like a long moment but was in reality only a millisecond later, the sensation of falling vanished and the darkness was replaced by flares of color that instantly resolved into a new, unfamiliar landscape.

More trees, smaller and more widely spaced than the ones in Canada, spread across mountainous terrain like a vast, irregular green carpet. A sky filled with ominous gray clouds. A few small creeks cut through the landscape like silvery ribbons. Harry noted all of this absently, since he had much more immediate problems than the new landscape. Namely, the fact that he and the Hulk had appeared a mile or two above the ground and were falling like stones.

Harry didn't waste time wondering how he had accidentally transported himself and the Hulk to a place he had never been to before, much less the method of transportation. Instead, he unleashed a telekinetic pulse that blasted the Hulk down into the tree-filled valley below. At once flocks of birds appeared, fleeing the trees in which they had been resting in favor of escaping the clash of the titans. Harry didn't blame them.

As Harry descended, he muttered "_Homenum Revelio_." Under normal circumstances he would have used a simple telepathic scan, but he didn't want to risk another potentially disastrous brush with the Hulk's mind. He was certain that most of the animals in the area were hastening to various escape routes, but the mountainous terrain was unlikely to contain humans. He was therefore surprised and a little alarmed to detect a single human presence not five feet away from the Hulk's landing site. Unable to get a good read on the location, Harry dived.

The urgency of the situation seemed to slow Harry's perception of time, and he found himself noticing details that he would have normally ignored. Flying with magical telekinesis was very different than flying on a broomstick; the lack of firm wood beneath him made Harry feel as if he were falling rather than diving, which took away much of the thrill he'd once gotten from pulling off such maneuvers, a feeling exacerbated by urgency. He landed softly on the forest floor and found himself facing what appeared to be the remains of a smashed log cabin. The Hulk stumbled out of the ruins, his expression fearsome.

Concentrating, Harry snapped his fingers and cried "_Incarcerous_!" Golden light flashed from Harry's hand, and suddenly his opponent was wrapped in dozens of black ropes as thick as Harry's leg. He stumbled and fell to one side, thrashing and bellowing in mounting outrage. Knowing he had only bought himself a few seconds, Harry hastened to remove the crushing weight of smashed wood from the spot where he'd detected the human presence. Even as the Hulk managed to bite through the ropes nearest his head Harry's quarry became visible among the splinters.

Soon the green giant had torn himself free from the ropes, which fell to the ground and dissolved, and Harry was summoning the unconscious and bleeding form of what appeared to be a teenaged boy to his feet. Harry floated away from the wreckage of the cabin, levitating the teenager beside him, and came to rest a hundred feet away, on the shore of a creek. All thoughts of administering first aid, however, were driven from his head before they even formed when the Hulk roared and charged him once more. As the beast approached, Harry pointed at him once more, this time making a strange gesture with his right hand, like a finger gun with two fingers and his thumb parallel to the ground. With that he shouted "_Confringo_!"

When cast by a normal wizard, this spell produced a jet of fiery orange light that caused whatever it struck to explode, which meant it was possible to dodge it. With the Phoenix warping and amplifying Harry's magic, however, that limitation was a thing of the past. There was no avoidable blast of energy; Harry simply aimed, and everything on the spot blew up.

BANG!

The explosion was so powerful that Harry staggered despite being well out of range. Flames erupted from the spot, sending a cloud of dirt and black smoke billowing into the sky. It left a crater the size of a swimming pool, set dozens of nearby trees ablaze, and sent the Hulk flying back the way he'd come, landing in a heap twenty meters beyond the ruins of the cabin. Seizing his chance, Harry apparated to a spot beside the ruined cabin and began conjuring a gateway to the Mirror Dimension.

The Hulk got groggily to his feet, his greenish black hair singed, and caught sight of Harry standing there, seemingly frozen. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth he charged, his massive fists bared. That was his final mistake. Exhaustion from fighting with Harry made him too slow, and Harry had both distance and a head start.

The air between them was disturbed by a strange apparition. Reality itself seemed to crack into a perfectly symmetrical prism, fashioning itself into a wall of crystalline fractals. An observer on Harry's side would appear to be looking through a distorted window. The Hulk, standing opposite, saw himself and his surroundings reflected as if by a mirror. The gateway expanded, twisted, and enveloped them both.

Harry was still far out of reach when the Mirror Dimension materialized. At first glance everything appeared normal, but if one looked closer they would see strange, crystalline distortions in the air, as though the area had been encased in a giant construct of symmetrically cut glass or diamond.

Harry's next hand gesture set this strange new reality spinning in a way contrary to what nature had intended. The earth shifted and warped, flipped in on and out of itself like a particularly psychedelic optical illusion, but this was no illusion.

The landscape itself _folded_, and the Hulk found himself falling backwards, parallel to the ground, which was now bent into an impossible square. The unnatural shift in reality was beyond anything the Hulk's enhanced strength could hope to overcome, and he flailed helplessly as the mountains around him twisted and warped, folding and bending and self-replicating until he was in a three-sided vertical tunnel fashioned from the mirrored mountain landscape, falling into a void so deep it was impossible to see what lay at the bottom, assuming there even was a bottom to perceive.

Harry floated along at a leisurely pace. Almost absently he conjured a whizzing portal back to the real world, summoned the injured teenager through it, and closed it up before warping the Mirror Dimension further. Chunks of rock erupted from the landscape. They grew and cut themselves into perfectly symmetrical fractal shapes that flew towards Harry, assembling like Legos into a circular island four meters across. Harry laid the kid out on it like a hospital bed, adding a Cushioning Charm for good measure. The Mirror Dimension would not snap back into position unless he willed it to do so, and he had folded space in this region of it with such complexity that it was impossible for an outside force to enter it, even if they conjured a gateway from the exact same location in the real world. Put together, it meant that the Hulk would not stop falling until Harry decided otherwise, and no one would be able to stop him from tending to the kid.

Soon, however, Harry was dismayed to realize that it would not be that easy. The kid was bleeding internally and sporting several broken bones. Worse, he was sporting a severe head injury; so severe in fact that it would likely affect his memories. Harry guessed that while the Hulk had not landed directly on the part of the cabin where the kid had been standing or sitting, the creature still clipped the unfortunate boy's head with a fist on his way through the roof. As Harry worked, he realized that his initial presumption that this was a kid may not have been entirely correct. According to his diagnostic spells, the bloke was more like a young adult, old enough to be in his first year of university.

Harry decided not to dwell on his patient's age. He repaired the contusions, set the broken bones back into place, cast a spell to encourage them to heal more quickly and robustly, and used a telepathic suggestion to induce a coma. Unfortunately, it was all triage by his standards. The bloke would need at least two weeks in Kamar Taj to recover from the physical injuries, but the brain damage could take much longer to repair.

When Harry finished patching up the worst of the boy's wounds, he glanced down over the edge of the platform. The Hulk would have been falling for more than ten minutes now, and he lacked the ability to warp the Mirror Dimension to negate the effects of gravity, which meant he had surely reached terminal velocity by now. Harry warped the surroundings and watched in morbid fascination as the tunnel of mirrored landscape shifted upward (or was Harry shifting himself downward?) until he found himself level with the Hulk, who was, sure enough, still falling.

Harry summoned another platform, identical to the first save for the fact that it was ten meters thick. The Hulk slammed into it with the force of a bomb dropped from the stratosphere, pulverizing the top layers and generating a tremendous crashing sound.

Harry cleared the debris and peered down. The Hulk lay face down in a crater shaped roughly like his own body, stirring feebly. For a moment Harry was too shocked to react. Not even that had been enough to knock out the beast, but how?! In desperation he made a sharp gesture of his right hand and yelled "_Stupefy_!"

There was a flash of fiery red light, and finally the Hulk lay still. Then, slowly but steadily, he began to shrink, like a deflating balloon. The vast muscles disappeared, his skin faded to pink, and his bones rearranged themselves. In a few seconds he was gone, and the unconscious Bruce Banner lay in his place. A gesture of Harry's hand sent the twisted landscape spinning once again, slowly returning to its original shape.

Gingerly Harry lifted Banner towards him, pulling the kid along with him, and conjured a gateway back to the real world. As they emerged in the forest Harry realized that the trees were still on fire, and he hastily extinguished them with a flick of his fingers.

Glancing down at the younger of his two… charges?... he wondered how the boy had ended up alone in a cabin in the woods. A second Human Presence-Revealing spell confirmed there was no one around for well over a hundred miles. What was a young adult doing alone out here in the middle of nowhere during the summer holidays? Was he hiding from something, or had someone hidden him there? If so, for what purpose? In this day and age, no one who hid in the middle of nowhere did so without a very good reason, and such reasons were often far from innocent.

_Then again_, Harry thought, _I'm hardly one to talk on that score_. Perhaps the cabin was a family safehouse of some sort, in which case Harry was effectively kidnapping the kid from a place where he was perfectly safe, but his instincts told him that wasn't the case. Frowning, Harry decided he'd return and investigate after he'd gotten his charges to the safety of Kamar Taj. To do that, he had to ascertain where he was.

The spell he cast was a modified version of the Tempus charm that showed latitude and longitude rather than the date and time, and Harry committed the numbers to memory. As an afterthought, he covered the entire valley in a Muggle-Repelling charm; he didn't want the wrong people to discover what happened here. Satisfied, he conjured a gateway to the courtyard where he'd spent so many hours training in hand to hand combat, darkened by the night on that side of the planet, and stepped through, levitating his charges in front of him.

_Aboard the Helicarrier, North Atlantic Ocean, July of 2003_

Nick Fury sat behind a reflective desk in his office aboard the Helicarrier, sipping a large mug of grayish cafeteria coffee, and let his thoughts unwind as he gazed through his tiny windows into the clear afternoon sky. Squinting at the horizon, he thought he could see clouds forming. A storm, perhaps? That made him think of rain, and soon he was, for the umpteenth time, remembering the first contact with Phoenix.

Just thinking about Phoenix made the one-eyed spymaster scowl. The telekinetic was as mysterious as he was powerful. Fury disliked mysteries, especially when they concerned people with extraordinary powers. Not once had he called the number Phoenix provided during the first contact incident. With the possible exception of an incident involving a dam in Bolivia, none of the crises that occurred since he received it were so dangerous or out of control that SHIELD couldn't handle them on its own, and Fury was under pressure from the World Security Council not to call upon Phoenix in any case.

However, it was clear that Phoenix had his own means of gathering information and traveling rapidly from one corner of the globe to another, for his actions seemed unrestricted by such trivial obstacles as international travel laws. Phoenix's extremely fine level of control and precision with his powers was well documented, as was his ability to fly, leading some to theorize that he had learned to manipulate air pressure and wind around himself to such a degree he could accelerate to flight speeds hundreds of times faster than sound.

Really, half the theories that Research and Development came up with about Phoenix and his powers were downright wacky. The most recent went so far as to call his powers actual magic. The thought of it made Fury want to snort. There was no such thing as magic. Granted, there were powerful forces out there that were poorly understood by modern science, but there was always a logical, if astonishing, explanation for the things that went bump in the night. Magic was just plain fantasy, and that was that.

More plausible was the theory that connected Phoenix to the so-called Event of 2001; a massive geomagnetic phenomenon that had disrupted the entire planet for a few short moments and nearly knocked the Helicarrier out of the sky. Fury would have dismissed that as more nonsense pulled from a drunk scientist's ass, but a study of internet forums frequented by those who had witnessed the strange golden auroras that accompanied the Event revealed that thousands of people had dreamed for weeks afterward of a giant bird constructed entirely of fire at the heart of a maelstrom of floating objects. In the mythologies of various cultures in the vicinity of the Eastern Mediterranean, phoenixes were always strongly associated with fire.

Coincidence? Fury doubted it. The prevailing theory was that the Event had been a byproduct of whatever had given Phoenix his powers, but it didn't explain why people dreamed about it. On the other hand, telekinesis itself should also be impossible, so that detail alone wasn't enough to disqualify the theory.

If Phoenix knew or cared what SHIELD thought of him, he gave no sign. Considering the fact that many of the organization's less scrupulous scientists and commanding officers were highly interested in the possibility of capturing and experimenting on him in hopes of reproducing his powers, that was probably for the best.

Fury's intercom chimed, and he pressed a button on the nondescript office phone at the corner of his desk. "Fury here,"

"Sir," said the voice of his female secretary, "we just received intelligence from our contacts in the army that general Ross found Dr. Banner in Canada and attacked him. Phoenix was there as well and intervened. Our satellites also captured an image of the spot where the battle took place. It was easy to identify because a significant patch of forest was leveled. We're preparing a report with all the details, but Ross is demanding a meeting with you. He seems to be under the impression that you orchestrated Phoenix's presence, and he's on the warpath."

Fury felt a tension headache make its presence known at the back of his skull. "Ross can go jump off a bridge for all I care," he snapped. "I'm calling Phoenix, and if he doesn't give me satisfactory answers to my questions, I'm shooting the bastard in the face."

"Very good, sir."

…

**Stay safe everyone!**


	8. 8: The Secret of the Phoenix

**Here I am again, after much too long. Sorry about that. My life has been busier than expected, and I barely scraped this together amid everything else I have going on. If I missed something in the editing process and ruined the story I apologize, but hopefully I didn't.**

**A number of reviewers hated the last chapter, and while I appreciate the kind comments that came after, there's no denying I could have done a better job. I have updated and improved the parts that bothered me most, but for the most part it's the same chapter. At the same time, I have to say I am not impressed with the people who insist that Harry should have let Ross die/killed him. Harry was grappling with the Phoenix Force, an extremely volatile cosmic power that doesn't mix well with human emotions, so giving in to its desire to kill Ross in a fit of rage would be a very bad idea. More to the point, Harry Potter is one of the most forgiving and big-hearted people in all of fiction. He offered Voldemort of all people mercy. Ross is nowhere near Voldemort's level of evil, however dangerous he is. Besides that, killing Ross would ruin Harry's public image, which is contrary to his goal of forming an alliance with SHIELD. Harry has other, less dangerous methods of dealing with Ross and his ilk. They will get their comeuppance. I do not support killing people unless absolutely necessary in any case, so don't expect me to turn any protagonist into a ruthless killer (if they aren't already).**

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

**…**

_Kamar-Taj Compound, Kathmandu, Nepal, July of 2003_

Master Hamir had told Harry he should rest after his battle with the Hulk, but Harry was too worked up to heed the advice. Instead he wrote a letter for Dr. Banner, leaving it at his bedside table in the suite that was prepared for him, before checking the coordinates he'd memorized from the cabin against a world map in his room. Harry raised his eyebrows when he found the spot on a world map. It was just beyond the northwestern edge of a Native American reservation in Wyoming, on national forest land. Only the most intrepid hunters and hikers were likely to visit that valley, and the cabin was well out of the way of any hiking trails, which confirmed Harry's suspicion that whoever built it had done so with the specific intention of creating a hiding place.

Now he paced the darkened courtyard where he'd first arrived, his mind racing. He knew that Thaddeus Ross would escape any repercussions from his actions in Canada thanks to his numerous political connections, which meant that Harry would have to resort to more underhanded methods to cripple the old war monger. Ross would have to blunder in a way so egregious and so public that no amount of political maneuvering could cover it up, and even then, there was a chance the justice system would let him off with a slap on the wrist. To neutralize him for good, Harry would have to intervene directly in the court proceedings. A telepathic nudge or two would be required to nullify any political pressure on the court.

A dirty trick? Certainly. Still, considering the trouble men like Ross caused, Harry felt it would be worth it.

Banner would need a safe place to hide until then. Even with meditation techniques from the Masters of the Mystic Arts helping him, he would never be able to live a completely normal life as long as he was a fugitive. Perhaps he could be sent somewhere isolated with an amulet to conceal him from electronic surveillance. That way, he would be mostly free to get on with his life, yet still be easy to contact should the need arise.

As Harry paced, he thought back to his dreams. He had taken to recording them in a journal, which he stored in a pocket dimension that he could summon it from at will. Pausing, he lifted his hand and pulled the deceptively small book, bound in black leather, out of thin air and began rifling through the pages in search of the vision he was thinking of. He recalled the hours he and Ron had spent working on Professor Trelawney's dream diary homework assignments, filling up the stupid little booklets she had handed out with bogus predictions of his own painful demise while an exasperated Hermione pointed out the inconsistencies, and he snorted in wry amusement. For a wild moment he wondered how Ron, Hermione, and Trelawney would react if they could see him now. He had gone from making up rubbish for the sake of an easy grade to routinely experiencing true prophetic dreams and recording them as often as he remembered them, all thanks to an unfathomably powerful cosmic entity that he now shared a body with. Ron would have been gob smacked, Hermione skeptical, and Trelawney a mixture of jealous and unjustly prideful.

Harry was smiling slightly when he finally found what he was looking for. It was a full color drawing of a green giant with a smaller, black humanoid shape at its center. Underneath the image he'd written a list of bullet points in black ink: _Anger, Strength, Confusion. Possession? One is two, and two is one. Conjoined? Friend or Foe?_

Frowning, Harry conjured another pen and scribbled an addendum in blue ink. _Genius Scientist, turns into green rage monster when stressed, possible ally _. Hoping that his recent experiences might put them into better context, Harry flipped through the journal's slightly battered pages in search of similar entries. To his disappointment, the only tidbits he found that might concern Banner were an image of the Hulk fighting a misshapen creature of similar size with spikes protruding from its back and joints, several lists and pictures of strangely colorful individuals that included a creature that was doubtlessly the Hulk, and, oddly, an image of a red version of the last. Harry studied these clues intently, but he couldn't make sense of them, so he decided to let it go at that.

After sending the journal back to its pocket dimension, Harry conjured a sheet of paper and wrote a message for Teddy. He enchanted the letter into a paper airplane and sent it through a portal to New York. As the circle of orange gold sparks closed, a new question bobbed to the surface of his mind. How had he transported himself to Wyoming, of all places, in the first place?

It wasn't apparition, nor was it something that could be accomplished through the Mystic Arts unless the practitioner was within a magical sanctum over which they held authority. The sensation of it was unique as well, but what truly alarmed him was that it had been involuntary. If it happened again, what would stop him from materializing inside a wall, or at the bottom of the ocean, or in space? Perhaps this new teleportation ability was an instinctive recreation of the phoenix bird's ability to instantly transport itself from place to place in a burst of flames, as Fawkes had once done. It was a handy ability to be sure, but it would be worse than useless if he couldn't control it.

_Just one more thing for my already long to-do list _, he thought. Deciding his head was getting too crowded, Harry sat himself cross-legged in midair and forced himself to relax. Soon he was lost in the emptiness of meditation, oblivious to the passage of time.

The sound of a phone ringing shattered his tranquility. It took him a moment to remember what the odd ringtone meant, and he scowled when he did. Why on Earth was SHIELD calling him now?

Harry apparated to the room that had been set aside for his exclusive use at the compound before he pulled out the prepaid flip phone, which was reinforced against magic by tiny runes engraved into the casing and answered. "What's going on?" he demanded.

"Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused?" The voice on the other end of the line was deep, rough, and very annoyed. It sounded vaguely familiar, but Harry wasn't sure where he'd heard it before. Then it clicked. He'd heard it through the memories of a pair of highly capable spies two years ago; Nick Fury, the director of SHIELD.

Harry's scowl deepened somewhat. "You'll need to be more specific, Mr. Fury."

"Don't play dumb with me, Phoenix, or whatever you call yourself!" Fury snapped. "I know perfectly well that you kicked General Ross's ass in Canada, and somehow spirited one Dr. Bruce Banner, a very dangerous fugitive, to safety. I have so many questions I don't even know which one to ask first."

"I know how that feels," Harry muttered. Unfortunately, Fury heard him.

"Don't mock me! You said not to call unless it was an emergency, but why would I trust you to help in an emergency when I don't know anything about you?"

Harry had to admit the director had a point. "I understand why you're wary, but I'm not out to hurt anyone. Ross attacked first, after I warned him explicitly not to start a fight he couldn't win. I don't think anyone understands just how powerful Banner becomes when he transforms,"

"Oh, I'm certain of that much," Fury growled. "Ross has always been a little trigger happy, and it only got worse after his last campaign overseas. He's caused me plenty of headaches, what with his obsession with super soldiers. But you have to realize that I can't trust you blindly, especially after you've gone and done something like this."

"No, I don't suppose you can." Harry thought for a moment. "It would be irresponsible of someone in your position to rely on one short, sketchy encounter with some of your agents to get my measure. I get that, but you have to understand that I can't just tell you all of my secrets. If I did, it would put both of us in danger."

Fury snorted. "Don't talk to me of hiding information because it's dangerous. I keep secrets and tell lies _for a living _. I concede that there might come a day where I need your help, but there's no way I'm trusting you unless you answer at least a few of my questions."

"We can't have a conversation like that over the phone," Harry said firmly. "I can keep you from tracking me, but the calls I make aren't secure."

"Point," Fury conceded. "But if I meet with you in person, I'd be putting myself at your mercy. I'd have to trust you not to throw me over the rainbow."

It was Harry's turn to snort. "Surely you've figured out that aggression isn't really my style by now. I'm trying to work with you, not against you."

"I suppose so," Fury mused. He sighed before he continued. "Alright, let's say we agree to meet in person. I have no clue where you are, and unlike you the logistics of international travel do limit my movements."

That made Harry smile slightly. "I know that your organization maintains its primary headquarters in Washington D.C., and that you spend much of your time aboard a flying aircraft carrier, very impressive technology by the way." The revelation of just how much Harry knew made Fury groan audibly. It must have been incredibly infuriating for the world's premier spy to learn that a powerful superhuman he had no control over knew so much about his organization. "But there's no way you'd actually invite me to either of those places. Tell you what. You can set up a meeting at a time and place of your choice, wherever you like, and send me the address a week in advance. I can get there on my own."

Fury was silent for so long that Harry wondered whether the director would actually go for it. Finally, he said "You haven't specified whether I can bring agents with me. Can I trust you not to lash out if I bring extra security?"

Harry almost laughed at the question. "Do you honestly think I care either way? The only reason Ross's troops gave me such a hard time was because I was distracted fighting something as strong as I was. If Banner hadn't transformed, I could've ended that battle in about a second. A bunch of your minions and their guns won't make any difference." He paused for a moment. "You can bring as many agents as you want if it'll make you feel better, but I will ask that the meeting itself stays between us. No eavesdropping allowed, and if I tell you something in confidence, you'll keep it to yourself unless I say otherwise. I will extend the same courtesy towards you."

Harry didn't mention how his telepathic abilities would make it impossible for Fury to control the flow of information. For the moment, what the director didn't know would not hurt him.

Fury hesitated once more before responding. "I have bosses to answer to. If they don't go for it, there's not much I can do, at least officially, and you'll find that they're not as reasonable as I am."

"Fair enough," Harry allowed. He had seen firsthand how much trouble bad bosses could cause. "But if you don't get back to me soon, I'll have to assume the offer has been rejected."

"I'll keep that in mind," Fury said. "It shouldn't take more than a day or two." Without further word, he ended the call.

As Harry replaced the phone in its hidden pocket of reality, he became aware of a presence at the edge of his peripheral vision. Turning, he was surprised to see the Ancient One standing in the open doorway to his chambers, still dressed in black robes. Her face was expressionless. Harry looked at her, wondering how he ought to react.

Feeling uncharacteristically apprehensive, Harry spoke in a quiet, hesitant voice. "I didn't just make a big mistake, did I?"

"No," the Ancient One said. Harry motioned for her to enter and shut the door behind her, then sat himself in midair, waiting for her to say more. "But there is something you and I need to discuss, for it has a great bearing on the alliances you will build in the future. You won't like it, but you must hear it nevertheless." Harry felt a sense of foreboding. "A question, first. Why didn't you let General Ross die?"

An expression of genuine surprise blossomed on Harry's face. "I wanted to, believe me," he managed to say. "He's the kind of man who would try to weaponize Teddy's metamorphosing and pick a fight with the Masters of the Mystic Arts simply because he can't control them, but I _couldn't _let him die. For one thing, Banner would never forgive me for letting him kill people while he's transformed. For another, killing Ross wouldn't solve the problem he represents. He has supporters and allies who think exactly the same way he does, and some may be even worse than he is. If I'm going to force such people out of positions of power, I have to draw them out of the shadows and make their true nature plain for all to see. I have to make them so despised by the public that their political allies will have no choice but to sever all ties with them. To make their very ideology synonymous in people's minds with things like racism and genocide. By saving Ross's life I've already proved I value human life more than he does, and the powers that be will notice."

The Ancient One digested this in silence. Uncertainty made Harry ask, "You don't think I made the right call."

"Your reasoning is sound," she assured him. "I would have let the general die and dealt with the consequences another time, but then, my heart is colder than yours."

Harry searched her face but saw nothing discernible in her expression. "What is it, then?"

The Ancient One seemed to brace herself, as if she were preparing herself to say something unpleasant. "Suppose that General Ross didn't have so many political allies to clean up his messes. Suppose that he truly was the lynchpin whose death would protect the lives and rights of superhumans for decades to come, and that the short-term consequences would be worth it. Would you let him die then? Or suppose you found yourself confronted with an entity whose actions threaten to destroy the world, and the only way to stop them is to kill them, or let someone else kill them? Say, a mortal being possessed by the essence of Dormammu."

That threw Harry for a loop. "I don't want to kill anyone," he admitted, trying not to think about the horrible idea of being possessed by Dormammu.

"No one with your kind of compassion would. That's one of the things the Phoenix Force looks for in a host, you know. No one who desires endless battles and death should have that kind of power."

"Then why are you asking me this?"

"I'm trying to prepare you for the day when choosing to be merciful will be a mistake."

"What?!" Harry gaped at his mentor in disbelief.

"Your decision to spare Ross's life showcases your capacity for forgiveness, empathy, and honor," she continued as if Harry hadn't spoken. "And you have the means to take advantage of the fallout of that decision without endangering any more lives. But you won't always have the luxury of sparing your conscience in the line of duty. Soon you will count terrorists, genocidal alien warlords, and cosmic horrors that revel in the despair of mortals among your enemies. Will you spare their lives, too, knowing what kind of damage they can cause and the pointlessness of trying to imprison them?"

Harry struggled to formulate a response. It wasn't as if he didn't have blood on his hands. He'd killed Quirrell in his first year, when he was only eleven. He'd killed the Serpent of Slytherin barely a year later, but he'd never taken a life deliberately since then. Even during the battles with Voldemort and his Death Eaters all the deaths he caused were indirect; a stunning spell that inadvertently sent a Death Eater toppling over a broken battlement, a Full Body Bind on another a split second before the ceiling over his head collapsed, an accidentally overpowered Impediment Jinx that stopped one's heart, and so on. Even Voldemort's death was a result of Harry goading the man into offing himself by using the wrong wand against the right person. Not once since the end of his first year at Hogwarts had he deliberately ended another human being's life with his own hands.

Of course, that hardly made him a saint. He'd attempted the Cruciatus Curse more than once. Granted, he was never very good at it, but he had tried. And he was disturbingly good at most other forms of combat magic he studied, regardless of their level of lethality.

The Ancient One seemed to know what he was thinking. "I'm not saying you should go around killing every potential threat to the world," she said. "That is the last thing either of us want. But there will come a time when you will have to kill once again. Not in self-defense, and not by indirect means. As the host of the Phoenix Force, you have a responsibility to maintain the balance of the cosmos, and part of that responsibility is deciding who should live and who should die, and forgive my use of the phrase, for the greater good."

Harry felt as if he were falling off his broom in third year again, and he shook himself. "During the fight in Canada," he began, "I didn't feel like myself. The Phoenix Force has always helped me before, but when I started channeling its power in actual combat something changed. It wanted to kill the soldiers, and I wanted to save them. I was fighting both them and myself, not to mention the Hulk. How am I supposed to save anyone if I can't get along with the very entity that chose me for the task?"

"I can't tell you," the Ancient One said softly. At Harry's skeptical expression she smiled. "Contrary to what my attitude implies, I do not know everything. I have never dared to channel the power of the Phoenix, and I have only ever met one other host in my life. I don't have the answers you need. You must discover them for yourself."

Having said her piece, the Ancient One rose and left the room, leaving Harry to mull over her words in brooding, silent solitude.

...

When Bruce Banner woke up, the last thing he remembered was the feeling of absolute panic that had overtaken him when he heard a gunshot ring out. After that…

Looking around, Bruce saw that he was in a dimly lit room with dark wood walls, gridded glass and metal windows flanked by gauzy curtains, an antique armoire, a writing desk, and what appeared to be a meditation mat. The bed he found himself lying in was spartan in design, with plain white sheets and no decoration, but it was very comfortable. Glancing down, he saw that someone had dressed him in a simple gray shirt and trousers made of what appeared to be linen.

It took Bruce a moment to realize what the strangest thing about his current situation was. There was no pain. He _knew _that he had transformed in Canada, that he had attacked the soldiers and his would-be rescuer, but the lingering ache that accompanied his return to consciousness was absent. Whenever he became the Other Guy, every organ in his body tore itself apart and regenerated, like getting a hundred full body workouts all at once. There should have been some lingering pain and fatigue, but instead he felt refreshed, even well rested. Stranger still, the Other Guy was quieter than he had ever been since he'd first emerged in Bruce's head. It was the closest he'd felt to being alone with his own thoughts since the accident.

What had happened? How long had it been since he reverted that he felt no lingering pain?

As he got to his feet, Bruce noticed a folded slip of paper with his name written on it in black ink sitting innocuously on his bedside table. He reached for it, sat himself on the edge of the bed, and unfolded it in his hands. It was a letter, and he began to read it.

_Dr. Banner,_

_I'm sorry about what happened in Canada. It was my fault, you see. I had set up a barrier to keep you from getting shot, but I forgot to tell you it was there, and the sound of a gun pointed at you being fired must have startled you enough to trigger the transformation. I managed to keep the Other Guy, as you call him, from killing any of the soldiers, but they kept on shooting at me, and it wasn't easy to keep them at bay while I was fighting you. That green rage monster is much stronger than anyone realizes. I myself accidentally caused a few deaths. Sloppy of me, really._

_The compound you find yourself in is called Kamar-Taj. It is the headquarters for an organization that protects the world from apocalyptic threats most people are completely oblivious to. I came here to learn about my new powers and to make a fresh start. Everyone here is broken in some way when they arrive, and most initially come for healing. They won't bat an eye at your alter ego._

_I can't promise that you'll be cured here, or that you'll be taught the same arts practiced by the masters, but you can learn how to control the Other Guy. Someone will come to check on you and show you around, and from there the decision about what to do next is yours. I know that as a scientist you're going to have an extremely hard time accepting what you'll see and hear in this place as fact, so here's a bit of advice. Forget everything you think you know._

_I'll see you soon._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Harry Potter_

_P.S. While I was subduing the Other Guy, we accidentally injured a teenager in a cabin. The head trauma is bad enough that he'll almost certainly have amnesia, so he's going to be staying at the compound to heal, and that could take a while. I don't know anything about him, not even his name. In the meantime, I have a plan to get General Ross out of your hair for good, as well as his political allies, many of whom are just as dangerous as he is. No one should have to suffer through what you have._

Bruce reread the letter twice, then set it down on the bedside table. He ran a hand over his face, thinking.

Fact: Potter was powerful enough to match the Other Guy blow for blow.

Fact: Despite Potter's efforts, there was at least one collateral casualty, whom Potter felt obligated to bring to this place for recovery.

Fact: Bruce was now being given what appeared to be free room and board by people who were apparently completely unafraid of the Other Guy, and for good reason.

Fact: Whatever this Kamar-Taj was, it was clearly separate enough from mainstream society that Potter had felt the need to advise Bruce to let go of his scientific mindset for the duration of his stay.

Fact: Bruce had no choice but to go along with all of this, because he had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

Bruce sighed. He really was out of his depth here, and the only way to find his footing was to forge ahead, so he got to his feet and gently pushed the doors to the room open. The hallway beyond was dimly lit by old fashioned lamps. Bruce was no architecture expert, but the style, decor, and construction reminded him of pictures he'd seen of east Asian temples and monasteries, and he wondered how far he'd traveled while he was unconscious. As he made his way down the hall, he heard a second set of footsteps nearby, growing louder as he approached a junction. When he passed the threshold, he found himself standing in a warm, sunlit room with low tables surrounded by cushions and filled with the smell of burning incense.

The owner of the second pair of feet he'd heard turned out to be an old Tibetan man with dark skin, black hair cinched in a high topknot, and a long, thin, graying beard and goatee who was entering the chamber from a hallway to Bruce's left. He wore round glasses and a set of blue and silver robes that reminded Bruce of pictures he'd seen of mountain-dwelling monks. Was that what this place was? Some ancient monastery full of secret knowledge that was too dangerous for the world at large? A year ago, Bruce would have scoffed at the idea, but he'd seen Harry Potter's telekinetic abilities firsthand, and the man had mentioned there were others like him. Perhaps this monastery taught and policed people with superhuman abilities, which would explain how Bruce had drawn their attention.

The old man looked straight at Bruce, and something in his ancient eyes told Bruce that the Other Guy didn't scare the man in the slightest. That, more than anything convinced Bruce that he should trust what Potter had told him in the letter.

_New York Harbor, NYC, USA, July of 2003_

The warehouse SHIELD ultimately chose for their meeting with Phoenix looked like something out of an old mafia movie. Located in the oldest and least used section of New York Harbor, it was one of a dozen identical buildings which together had once served as a haven for smugglers, human traffickers, mobsters, and others in need of secret meeting places. These days SHIELD used the place for sting operations and field training scenarios, but never before had it served as the setting of a clandestine meeting with a potential asset who was too powerful and mysterious to control.

From the outside, the warehouse was completely ordinary and unremarkable. If one were to investigate the interior, however, they would find that it was nearly empty save for a few empty shipping containers, most of which were stacked along the walls to the ceiling, obscuring the windows. The resulting clearing was occupied by a plastic folding table surrounded by three metal chairs and four sets of flood lamps mounted on tall, ungainly metal stands. Behind the sparse few containers left on the warehouse floor crouched SHIELD agents dressed in black combat gear and carrying assault weapons.

Director Nick Fury was sitting in an unmarked black van a ways a stone's throw away from the warehouse, concealed behind one of its neighbors, as he and his team waited for Phoenix to show up. Built for use as a mobile command center during small, quick operations, the back of the van was a technology geek's wet dream, filled with computers and control interfaces that looked like they belonged in a spy movie. Or aboard a space shuttle.

It had taken a great deal of persuasion on Fury's part to convince the United Nations World Security Council to agree to the telekinetic's offer of a meeting. They had numerous objections, most of which stemmed from their egos rather than any sense of prudence. First, they complained that Phoenix was a complete unknown and very powerful, which was true. Then they wailed that Fury was needlessly putting himself in danger by meeting with the man personally, never mind that Fury went into the field far more often than anyone with the directorship ought to and they had never been concerned for his safety before. After that had come the posturing about protocol, how outsiders bowed to SHIELD and not the other way around, and so on.

Fury had told them to put a sock in it. He freely admitted he was a prideful, manipulative, controlling, paranoid bastard, but he also knew where to draw the line. The Council had no such restrictions, and their decisions were often reactionary at best. Their job was to keep SHIELD in check, but more often than not it was Fury who had to keep _them _in check. Their solution to every problem was to shoot at it and experiment on the remains, but Fury had learned from experience that such an attitude was foolish at best.

Unconsciously he reached up and felt the skin around his eye patch. _Stupid cat _, he thought darkly. He sincerely hoped that Phoenix didn't have any psychotic pets. Carol's flerken had been bad enough for a lifetime, thank you very much.

A telltale light flashed on one of the consoles, and the tech operating it flicked it off, peering at his screen in search of whatever anomaly had set it off. "Sir, we've detected an object hovering right on top of the meeting point," she reported without looking up. "Humanoid shape and size, twenty meters from the ground. No movement."

Fury glanced at Phil Coulson, the only other person present in the vehicle. The agent's face remained expressionless, but Fury knew him well enough to recognize the twinkle of satisfaction in his eyes. Wordlessly, the director reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills, which he passed to a now openly smirking Coulson before he all but flounced out the van's rear doors. The tech watched this exchange with a gob smacked expression, then started to giggle. Coulson silenced her with a look, then followed his boss, pocketing the money with untoward smugness.

Coulson and Fury made their way across the warehouse district's concrete pavement to the site of the meeting and looked up. There, floating above the warehouse, was a humanoid figure illuminated by the beams of flashlights held in the hands of suited SHIELD agents gathered around the place, having appeared seemingly from nowhere.

Fury stared at the telekinetic for a long moment. Phoenix was dressed in strange, dark green clothing like nothing he'd ever seen before, complete with a cowl that cast unnaturally long shadow over the man's face. Fury noted that Phoenix had ditched the cloak he'd reportedly worn in Canada.

"You can come down now. Slowly, if you please."

Phoenix remained impassive for a moment, then began to descend. He landed silently ten feet from Fury and Coulson, and though Fury could not see his face, he had the impression that the telekinetic was studying him. For a long moment, no one spoke.

Coulson broke the silence. "Well, we have everything set up inside." He gestured at the warehouse. "Right this way." And he led the way through the door.

…

Harry did not take the metal seat that was offered to him. Instead he looked Fury directly in the eye and said "I told you that this meeting was to be private, Director. Send your agents outside, or I will."

Fury hesitated, then barked "Everyone out!"

Harry studied the agents as they shuffled out from their places of concealment behind the few shipping containers left in the warehouse. To their credit, none of them complained or sent him a dirty look, though a scan of their surface thoughts told him that many of them wanted to. Fury's right hand, one Phil Coulson, looked uncertain as to whether Harry's demand that the observers leave included him, but Harry was quick to say, "You may stay."

When they were alone, Harry raised his left hand and made an odd beckoning gesture. Instantly several small devices shot up from beneath the table and chairs as well as the inside of Fury's black trench coat, flew to a spot above Harry's hand, and crushed themselves into powder. Giving the one-eyed spymaster an unimpressed look that not even the shadow over his face could conceal, Harry moved to one of the chairs and sat. Fury sighed as he and Coulson took the ones on the opposite side of the table.

Not one for small talk, Fury immediately opened his mouth and demanded "Who are you?"

Harry stared at him, then shook his head. "If you think I'm going to just tell you, then you're a fool. I have a life outside of this," he gestured vaguely at their surroundings, "and I'm not going to put it at risk by telling a super spy my real name. This is not negotiable. The identity of the person beneath this hood will remain a secret from anyone who I don't consider family. If you have a problem with that, too bad."

Fury looked like he'd swallowed a lemon, but Coulson spoke up before he could retort. "That's perfectly understandable. The higher ups won't like it, but you have no reason to care about that either way. We're here to build trust, and we haven't earned any from you."

Harry felt his respect for Coulson rise. "True. But then, I haven't exactly earned your trust either," he said.

Coulson looked relieved. "Thank you for understanding. Now, let's get one thing straight. Are you human?"

Harry hesitated, but the moment was so brief no one noticed. "Yes and no. Genetically I'm as human as you are, but ever since the day I was born I've been… different."

"Different how?" asked Coulson, appearing genuinely interested. "We've encountered people with superhuman abilities before, but they're almost always genetically mutated in some way, or else using technology."

Again, Harry found himself hesitating. This was harder than he thought it would be. "You wouldn't believe me."

"Why not? We've dealt with some pretty weird stuff in the past. Try us."

"How weird?"

Now it was Coulson's turn to hesitate. Sensing intense discomfort from the agent and a sense of quiet, warning menace from Fury, Harry focused on the latter's surface thoughts and caught several flashes: a blonde-haired woman wreathed in an aura of golden-white light, a man transforming into a creature with greenish skin and pointy ears like an elf's, a cube that appeared to be made of glass, glowing with a fierce blue light, and the words "Kree," and "Skrull."

Perplexed, Harry decided to embrace his inner Gryffindor and kick the hornet's nest. "You think I'm an alien. Or that I was raised by aliens." Coulson paled, though almost imperceptibly, and Fury got half a curse out before he regained control of himself. Harry did not need to be a telepath to interpret those reactions. "You wouldn't believe it was possible if you hadn't already encountered incontrovertible proof that it was so." A vein pulsed in Fury's temple, reminding Harry of Vernon. Coulson was sweating. "You don't have to confirm or deny as much," he continued. "But it's clear that's what you assumed of me."

Without a word, both spies nodded. Harry sat back, weighing whether to search for more information in their minds, but decided that such an act was too contrary to his desire for mutual trust. It wasn't as if he needed to know; his curiosity was too idle for that. If they wanted him to know more, they would tell him.

Harry pressed on. "I can assure you that I am a human being born and raised on Earth, but not Earth as you know it," he said.

Fury's scowl, which seemed to be his default expression, deepened. "The way you make it sound," he ground out, "there's a lot more to our little corner of the universe than we realize."

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Harry said. "You know so little about how the world really works that I can barely take you seriously when you claim to be familiar with 'weird stuff' as you call it."

Coulson blinked. Fury's scowl became a venomous glare. "What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded, nearly shouting.

Harry didn't answer immediately. Instead, he decided to do something bold. Muttering a spell under his breath, he flicked his hand to summon a steaming pot of hot tea, a trio of plates, a tray of chocolate chip biscuits, and three porcelain mugs. Coulson and Fury's jaws dropped as the pot poured its steaming contents into each of the mugs and several cookies flung themselves onto the plates

"Tea?" he offered, levitating the mugs into the air and taking his own into his hand.

Fury stared at his mug before leaning away from it in a clear rejection, but Coulson robotically accepted his own and took a tentative sip. His expression brightened. "I admit I'm no connoisseur and that I usually prefer coffee, but this has got to be the best tea in the world."

Harry almost smiled, remembering when he'd had a similar reaction the first time he'd tried it. Due in part to their open mindedness, international connections, and many millennia of operation, the Masters of the Mystic Arts were experts in all branches of the culinary arts. This particular blend of tea was the Ancient One's favorite.

Fury seemed to be in no mood to follow his colleague's example. In all probability he wanted to wait and see what side effects the tea would have on Coulson before trying it for himself, disregarding the fact that Harry was drinking it as well. Then again, it would have been extremely easy for Harry to fake drinking it, so the man might have a point. "I haven't poisoned this tea, you know," he said. "Or the biscuits. Sorry, I know you call them cookies."

As Harry helped himself to one, Fury asked in a low voice "How did you do that?"

Harry almost smiled. "How do you think I did it?" At Fury's glare he added, "I'm not making fun of you. The explanation will be rather hard to believe, and I want to know what conclusions you would draw without it."

Fury's expression softened somewhat. "I'm no expert, but I would say you've learned how to bend light and sound to make stuff invisible. You had this ready from the moment you arrived, probably prepared it somewhere near here, and kept it hidden until you wanted to reveal them."

Were it not for his reduced emotional reactions courtesy of meditation, Harry would have laughed his head off at the theory. It was ridiculous! Even he could not do something like that without casting spells. As it was, he let out a soft snort. "Not even close. Try again."

Fury was glowering again. This time, it was Coulson who tried to puzzle out the physics behind Harry's trick. "You teleported this here from wherever it was made," he said, popping the last fragment of his biscuit into his mouth. "I've read theories about wormholes. In theory, you can fold space like a piece of paper and bring two points close together, then form a tunnel between them. You could have telekinetically achieved something similar, though I imagine it would be extremely difficult."

Harry almost sighed. "Closer, but no. I'm not powerful enough to bend space, not directly, at any rate. The amount of energy that requires is beyond anything I can summon, at least for now."

Fury's one eye narrowed. "You speak as if you're certain you're growing stronger."

"I _am _growing stronger," Harry affirmed. "My powers have been growing for years, and even I don't know what my upper limits will be."

"You stated that Banner's alter ego is stronger than anyone realizes, and you barely surpassed him in terms of raw power. And now you're telling me you're getting stronger?"

"I did. The green giant could, if worked up enough, punch the ground hard enough to generate earthquakes so powerful they'd send half the eastern seaboard crumbling into the Atlantic. A few years from now I'll be powerful enough to flatten him with no effort at all."

"How?!" Fury demanded. "What are you?"

"I thought," Coulson interrupted, sounding uncannily like a father settling a dispute between his six-year-olds, "he was going to tell us how he summoned these scarily tasty refreshments." He sipped his tea.

Harry decided he liked Phil Coulson. "I made this," he gestured at the treats, "a few hours ago and contained it in a pocket dimension, out of sync with the normal fabric of space and time. Imagine taking a blanket and folding a small portion of it and sewing the folded portion shut in a way that hides the fact that it was folded at all, and that comes close to what I did."

Phil's expression didn't change, but his eyes betrayed his fascination. "You said you can't directly fold space. How did you create a pocket dimension?"

Harry almost smiled. "Tell me, agents of SHIELD, do you believe in magic?"

Phil's eyes narrowed. Fury all but growled. "If you're going to waste our time with jokes and fairytales-"

"I assure you I am being perfectly serious," Harry said, all traces of warmth or humor gone. "You know some of what I can do, and so far, you haven't been able to come up with an explanation. You say you're familiar with weird stuff, yet you dismiss the possibility that magic could actually exist even when the proof is right in front of you."

Coulson spoke before Fury could. "It's not that we don't believe you're telling the truth," he said carefully, "but we've encountered people who call their abilities magic, when in reality it was simply a superhuman ability created from advanced science. Many primitive cultures call technology beyond their level magic. So far, there has been a scientific explanation for everything SHIELD has encountered. What makes you so certain that what you can do is really magic? It's just telekinesis, isn't it?"

Harry shook his head. "I can assure you that what I do really is magic, but my definition of the word 'magic' is very different from yours. The line between science and the mystic arts is much blurrier than it appears."

"How would you define magic, then?"

Channeling his inner Ancient One, Harry said "Magic is the art of using energies drawn from other planes of existence to impose one's own will on the rules of reality. At the root of existence, mind and matter meet, but taking advantage of that fact is a science in much the same way that nuclear physics and biochemistry are sciences. At the same time, magic is unique in that it behaves much like a living thing. It is, in essence, the science of _defying _science."

As he spoke, he conjured a fireball in his hand and began to manipulate it, sculpting it into a perfect, vertically oriented ring, changing its colors from yellow to green to blue and back again, before twisting it into a complex, spherical net and finally dissolving it into a swarm of bright pink butterflies, which flew into the air before dissolving into soap bubbles.

...

Nick Fury's mouth had fallen open. He had thought nothing could shock him more than the Skrulls and Carol's powers, but what he'd just seen was impossible! Even Phil, dependable, unflappable Phil Coulson, looked shocked.

Fortunately, Phil recovered quickly. "That doesn't sound very magical," he managed to say.

Phoenix shrugged. "What were you expecting? A charlatan showing off a rabbit pulled from a hat?"

His sense of wonder and astonishment vanishing as quickly as it had appeared, Fury ground out "I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understand. You're saying you can manipulate matter and energy to break physics with your mind?" His thoughts whirled. This was a threat beyond anything he had imagined. He had been rattled by the display of power Phoenix had given Barton and Romanoff years ago, and now the telekinetic had admitted his power was constantly growing. If he ever became hostile, there was no telling how much damage he could cause.

But the idea of magic, real magic, was the worst of it.

Concealing objects in pocket dimensions? Turning fire into butterflies? Was Phoenix able to travel around the world so quickly by using magic? Could he teleport? Most alarming of all… "You called magic a science. That implies that you're not the only person who can use it. Scientific investigation takes time, and manpower."

"People have been studying magic for a long time, Director," Phoenix said simply. "But magic users are a secretive lot, and for good reason. You can't seriously believe I taught myself how to do what I can do."

"What I believe is that you're messing with forces you have no business playing with," Fury snapped. How could SHIELD's intelligence be this flawed? It was humiliating! "And that makes you a danger to the safety of the world. You're a threat. Hell, all you magic users are threats, and you've been _hiding _yourselves. I'm surprised you haven't destroyed the world already!"

"Sir," Phil said, voice urgent, "I really don't think-"

"How dare you," Phoenix said icily, cutting Phil off. "I came here to build trust, yet the moment I start revealing my secrets you respond by calling me and my kind threats. Little wonder that magic is such a well-kept secret when the people in charge want to burn us all at the stake, like those fanatics who conducted the Salem Witch Trials, or the Spanish Inquisition. What right do you have to call the study of magic a threat? What do you know about magic? Are you a wizard, now, Director?"

Fury flinched, but Phoenix pressed on ruthlessly before he could say anything else. "Magic users hid themselves out of self-preservation, yes but that doesn't mean we're putting people in danger. The Masters of the Mystic Arts have existed since the founding of Jericho, and they haven't destroyed the world yet. And we can't stop practicing magic or submit ourselves to your authority just to satisfy your paranoia."

"Why not?" Fury all but shouted back, ignoring the nervous look on Phil's face. "SHIELD protects people from the things that go bump in the night. I think magic more than qualifies."

Phoenix threw back his hooded head and laughed derisively. The furnishings shook, and Fury felt his blood run cold. _Perhaps I should have listened to the Council after all _, he thought.

"You think you're the ones protecting people from what goes bump in the night, as you say?" Phoenix chortled, every word dripping with scorn. The tea and cookies he'd summoned vanished. "You struggle to contain mundane threats like terrorists and rogue mutants, and up until a few minutes ago you were completely ignorant of the existence of magic. Meanwhile, the Masters of the Mystic Arts are in a state of constant war with beings so horrible that if I told you half of what I know about them you'd run away in terror at the mere mention of them."

Fury felt it then; a sense that he was standing next to an armed nuclear warhead. No, an erupting volcano. Phoenix was emitting an aura of power and menace so intense it was all the director of SHIELD could do not piss himself. It was an invisible, yet undeniable certainty that he was in the presence of something _other _, something that could crush him like a gnat with the tail end of a thought if it wished, and he had just made it very angry. He was sweating, and it took all of his strength to force his next sentence out. "What threats?"

"Just as there are aliens not native to this planet, there are entities who are alien to this very reality. Parallel worlds and dimensions without end."

Impossible. "Parallel worlds are a theory," Fury all but whimpered, "and a flimsy one at that. What you're speaking of is impossible."

Phoenix moved so fast, it was as though he had teleported. One moment, he was sitting on the opposite end of the table, the next he was hovering in front of Fury, the table was ten feet away, and the green-clad man had his right thumb pressed to Fury's forehead.

"No, it isn't. Open your _mind _!"

What happened next would be ingrained into Nick Fury's memories with all the permanence of the Great Pyramid of Giza. For one brief moment he felt a pressure against his skull, against his very thoughts, and suddenly his depth perception was back; could see as perfectly as he had the day he joined SHIELD. Next second, he was airborne.

Nick was falling upwards with the speed of a bullet fired from a sniper rifle. He felt nothing but a strange coldness and the disorientation of spinning and flipping through freefall, smelled nothing, tasted nothing. He crashed through the roof of the warehouse and noticed only because he saw metal splinter around him. He shot into the night sky, passing clouds, an airplane, a space telescope, screaming useless denials as he went. "Hoooooly shiiiiit! Oh no, No, NO, NO, NOOO! This isn't real. This isn't real. This isn't-"

Fury's string of panicked cries abruptly cut off. He was floating in the vacuum of space, the shining orb that was the Earth laid out below him and the starry black void of space everywhere else. He spotted a metallic glow rapidly approaching him. A satellite the size of an articulated truck.

Fury reached for it and managed to catch the transmitter antenna. Instantly he felt himself jerked irresistibly backward. The Earth passed beneath him so quickly it blurred and twisted around him. His hold on the satellite broke, and he screamed as he hurtled through a tunnel of darkness and multicolored light.

The voice of Phoenix echoed in his ears, sounding strangely distant and quiet yet at the same time utterly impossible to ignore. "You think you know how the world works?"

The tunnel of psychedelic lights shifted into a kaleidoscope of colors and shadows. Twisted _things _Fury didn't have a name for zipped past him. Streams of green, gold, blue, and violet energy erupted from each of his limbs and bent crazily like rubber bands. Phoenix spoke again. "You think that your single-minded focus on logic and provable science can explain everything that happens in this strange and wonderful world we call home? You believe that this tangible universe we experience is all there is?"

The streams of light disappeared. The kaleidoscope became a maelstrom of black particles that resembled iron filings, drifting amidst a deep blue void in clouds that pulsed to a rhythm Fury could not hear. Jets of orange sparks streaked across the void, setting the black clouds ablaze. Everything spun and tilted again, and Fury saw a dozen images of his own body floating before a grouping of the black dust clouds that fashioned themselves into concentric rings. Fury merged with the images of himself and hurtled through the eye of the formation and into a pulsating tunnel of yellow and green lights that flickered with ghostly black flames.

"What is real?" Phoenix asked, his tone too casual to be taunting. "What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses?" Fury could not answer. He hurtled through a luminous yellow sky dotted with white stars, black webbing stretching across it to connect thousands of reddish violet spheres as large as the full moon. As he passed one of the spheres, a mountain of green flesh emerged from behind it. The creature was surely too large to have hidden behind the planetoid, too large to hide behind Jupiter itself. It kept emerging, length after nauseating length of horror until Fury realized it was just a tubular limb, one of half a dozen gigantic, writhing arms emerging from a sphere of snotty green flesh with a single enormous, lidless maroon eye at its heart, glowing with unmistakable malice.

"We are not alone. We never have been," Phoenix hissed. A colossal green tentacle reached for Fury, but before it could touch him, he collided with one of the giant black webs, and suddenly he was in a landscape of bulging, fleshy structures, illuminated by a sickening orange glow. The cancerous terrain pulsed with green light, which shifted to golden yellow and condensed into geyser like streams.

Fury fell into a column of liquid amber light and was blasted into a fleshy vortex. It rippled outwards from a bottomless black void, and Fury hurtled straight through it, emerging in a twisting cavern, illuminated by a cold white light, made entirely from human limbs, naked and clothed, smooth and scarred, healthy and shriveled, dark and pale. The limbs writhed and twisted, reaching for him.

"No," he all but moaned as they grabbed him and dragged him towards a wall of hissing hands. He looked down and saw his fingertips warp, each sprouting another hand that grew and grew until the tips of those new fingers sprouted more hands, and again until he realized his entire body was sprouting hands. "Motherfu-!" they wrapped around him, cutting off his speech, dragging him to the walls until _he _was part of the cavern of hands, and then he was outside his own body again. He was tiny and what he had been was a giant. He fell through his own dilated pupil and down a fleshy black tunnel.

The tunnel became the void of space, black as the darkest night, filled with glimmering stars. Fury fell past clouds of glowing gas and icy dust, past a planet orbited by metal ships fashioned into impossible shapes and towards its blinding white sun. "Our reality is not unique. Our universe is just one of an infinite number, our history a single branch of the tree of time," said Phoenix.

He continued to speak even as Fury collided with the star, only to find himself drifting through a place made of shifting, crystalline fractals. "Worlds without end. Some are almost identical to our own right until the moment a key event plays out differently. Every 'what if' scenario is real, somewhere out there." Fury saw himself reflected in the luminous, cracked planes, over and over again. He saw his own face, a thousand versions of it. Some smiled, some frowned, some laughed, some cried. Some had both eyes intact, while others were confined to life support equipment, and still others bore scars he never had.

"Some worlds are so alien that our physics would break down instantly upon exposure to the matter and energies native to them." As Phoenix said the last word, the cracked mirror darkened, revealing a thousand planets in countless colors. "Some are benevolent and lifegiving, others filled with malice and hunger."

The mirrors folded away into a smooth void again. Fury was floating in a black sky stained with purple stars and sickening, multi-colored auras. Planets constructed of melted, reddish purple flesh drifted past, illuminated by swirling vortexes of glowing particles. "Dark, hostile places where entities older than linear time lie ravenous and waiting."

Fury saw the space in front of him contort into a giant face with eyes like purple suns. It glared at him, and just for a moment Fury knew its thoughts. It was hungry and cruel. It wanted to devour him, to devour his world, to cause pain and destruction on a scale to make the gods weep, to conquer and rule, and its patience was infinite. _Evil _.

Next second Fury was whisked away into the void of space, but it wasn't space as he knew it. Against the blackness he saw, instead of the glimmer of stars, an endless nebula, a vast cloud of gases glowing in colors he never imagined existed. "Who are you in this vast multiverse, Mr. Fury?" Phoenix asked, in barely more than a whisper.

Fury floated there, still as a statue, as if paralyzed by the question. Then his world bent like a rubber band and he shot off into the void once more. He passed through space so quickly that the glow of stars and other things became streaks in his vision, a blinding light show that grew brighter and brighter until he saw only whiteness.

Then he hit the floor. Pain shot through his arms and legs from the force of impact. His head spun, and he could breathe again. His heart raced at the speed of sound. It took Nick a moment to realize that his depth perception was gone. He had only one eye again. Somehow, that reassured him, as if it were some indicator that he could trust his senses again. He was shaking when he looked up, and it took all of his strength to muster the words he rasped at Phoenix, who was standing over him magisterially.

"Ne-never. Do that. Again."

Suddenly Phil was there, helping Nick to his feet. The agent's face was white, and his lips were trembling.

"I saw that," he all but whimpered. "I saw all of it. How did you- what did you do?!"

Phoenix floated into the air and summoned the overturned furnishings. Nick found himself in his chair again, a rattled looking Phil sitting beside him, as Phoenix addressed him. "I pushed your astral form out of your physical body and sent it on a sojourn through the multiverse," Phoenix explained. "I also temporarily linked Phil's consciousness with yours so that he could see what was happening to you from a third person perspective. I guarantee that everything you both saw was very real."

For once, Fury was at a loss for words. Fortunately, Phil was quick to recover. "We're barely a blip on the radar to someone like you," he said. There was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice. Or the awe. Phoenix said nothing. "Why tell us any of this? Why come here at all? Why reveal yourself in the first place?"

"Because," Phoenix murmured, "It's high time that you received a wakeup call about the way you approach superhumans and advanced science. For too long you have had free reign to meddle with powers beyond your understanding, and the sorcerers, in their arrogance, have done nothing about it. Humanity has the potential to become one of the greatest civilizations in the universe, yet we're wasting it killing each other for the pettiest reasons. The current status quo is leading us to our own destruction, and I, for one, am sick of it."

Fury remained speechless, but Phil, bless him, seized the initiative. "What do you want from us?"

Despite his shadowed face, Fury had the impression that Phoenix was relieved. "For all my power, I can't be everywhere at once. I can't change the world by my lonesome, not without going down a very dark path." Fury could hear the emphasis placed on the word 'dark.' "We have a long road ahead of us, and it starts with bridging the gap between my world and yours. Right now, the biggest obstacle to that goal is General Thaddeus Ross. I have a problem with people like him, and unless I'm greatly mistaken, so do you. I don't want him dead, but I do want him and those like him stripped of power before they cause irreparable damage in their search for super soldiers."

Fury finally found his voice. "For once, you and I are in complete agreement."

They talked for over an hour after that, planning the downfalls of a truly alarming number of corrupt politicians, military men, and select members of the CIA and FBI who were on their watch lists. No other mention of magic was made save for the promise Phoenix extracted that they would keep its existence a secret until he told them otherwise. By the time they were finished, Fury was so exhausted he could barely get to his feet.

He stumbled, and as Phil caught him by the arm, Phoenix approached. "May I?" he asked, his tone sympathetic. Phil opened his mouth with a denial on his lips, but Fury waved him away and nodded permission. Phoenix placed the palm of his hand against Fury's chest, directly over his heart, and he felt a surge of strength buoy him to his feet. He felt rejuvenated, energetic even.

"What did you do?" he asked, trying and failing to conceal a note of abject gratitude.

"I lent you some of my strength," Phoenix explained. "It'll keep you on your feet for another hour or so, but when it wears off, you'll crash even harder than you would under normal circumstances after such a long day, so take it easy."

Fury nodded. In a low voice, Phoenix added "I'm sorry for dragging your astral form through the multiverse like that. One mistake and I could have killed you or driven you mad."

Fury's gratitude vanished. "Get out of here before I change my mind about all this and shoot your brains out," he snapped.

There was a loud crack, like a whip, and Phoenix vanished.

_Potter Household, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, July of 2003_

Two weeks after the meeting with Fury and Coulson, Harry sat in his living room watching the news with no expression on his face apart from a twinkle of satisfaction in his green eyes. The light of the setting sun outside shone through the windows, casting long shadows on the red and gold rug where Teddy sat, his back against the couch as he fiddled with a Rubik's puzzle cube.

The top story that evening concerned alarming footage of a battle between American soldiers, a green sasquatch-like creature, and a man with telekinetic powers on Canadian soil. The name of the man who transformed into the creature had been concealed by advanced editing software, but everything else was unchanged.

Many so-called experts appeared to talk about terrorism, human experimentation, and the sovereignty of the United States. Many debates were held about the apparent dangers of superhumans and the American government's tendency to meddle where it wasn't wanted. Many arguments nearly erupted into shouting matches, with both sides holding nothing back, but the general consensus was that Brigadier General Thaddeus Ross was out of order, that it was very lucky the mysterious telekinetic had attempted to minimize casualties, and that it was highly suspicious that the incident had initially gone unreported.

The torrent of damning evidence had only just begun. Harry mused that it was an excellent birthday present as he took a bite of chocolate cake made with ingredients supplied by Daniel Drumm.

As Harry finished his slice, he heard a whizzing sound and looked up in time to see a tiny sling ring portal deposit a note onto his coffee table. Banishing the remnants of his desert to the table to rest alongside Teddy's, Harry summoned the note and found exactly two words, written in the Ancient One's elegant script.

_He's awake._

Harry's pulse quickened.

…


	9. 9: A Branch of The Tree of Time

**Well, as of the publishing of this chapter, this story is officially a year old! I published the first chapter on my birthday, and now I've come full circle by publishing another chapter on/around my birthday once again. So… Hurray?**

**Reading some people's reviews, I noticed that the most common theory about the guy Harry found at the cabin in the woods in Chapter 7 is that he's Wolverine. He's not. Feel free to keep guessing, because this guy won't remember who he is for quite a while. I will offer one hint about his identity; he plays a major role in the conflict between SHIELD and HYDRA, but the encounter with Harry has _drastically_ changed his fate. In fact, he's the last person you'd expect to see involved with the Masters of the Mystic Arts.**

**I admit this chapter is rather short, but it's mostly set up for something important further down the line, so please bear with me. There is an important announcement in the author's note at the end.**

**[Edit: The contents of the Announcement are now resolved; please ignore it]**

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

**…**

_ Kamar-Taj Compound, Kathmandu, Nepal, July of 2003 _

Harry strode through the halls of Kamar-Taj as rapidly as his feet could carry him without running. As he moved, his green uniform (he refused to call it a costume) dissolved into regular clothing; a simple black t-shirt and dark blue jeans. When he reached the infirmary, he was greeted by a sorcerer who took one look at him and said "I was wondering when you'd show up. He woke up and fell back asleep again, but all signs indicate that he'll awaken again in a few minutes."

Harry nodded his understanding and slipped past the man into the rooms beyond. The infirmary was a long, wide corridor of a room with simple beds along the walls, each with a nightstand and plain white sheets enchanted to sink like a gel around the occupants, which minimized the pressure on an injured patient laying down. The only occupied bed had a partially open privacy screen around it, and Harry could just make out the shadowed outline of the patient lying down. Stepping into the tiny space around the bed, he shut the privacy screen with a twitch of his finger and conjured a cushioned chair to sit in.

Harry allowed himself a moment to study the young man. Skin too light to be called olive but darker than Harry's own complexion, short black hair that appeared easy to tame, symmetrical facial features, broad shoulders, and the lean physique of someone with an active, difficult lifestyle. Despite initially labeling him a kid, Harry knew now that this youth was only a few years younger than him and had some growing to do. In a year or two the bloke would draw stares with his good looks, but just now the lingering traces of youthful softness clashed with the shape of his features in a way that made him look oddly sinister, an impression encouraged by the way he scowled in his sleep.

Figuring it would be best not to meddle with the mind of someone who was recovering from severe head trauma, Harry decided to let the bloke reawaken on his own. He cast a monitoring spell, then slipped into meditation. He was empty of all thought, empty of emotion, his mind blank save for a tongue of flame flickering at its heart. He was one with the flame, and it was one with him. His surroundings vanished. There was only the flame.

Harry didn't know how long he remained this way, suspended in the depths of the void. It was a conscious decision to ignore the passage of time, a handy trick for situations where he needed to wait patiently. Eventually, the void was shaken by an impression of a strong vibration at the base of his skull, a signal from the monitoring spell. Harry relinquished the void, shut off the spell, and opened his green eyes to look down into a pair of dark brown ones that were halfway open and fogged with confusion.

The youth blinked several times, then shifted slightly on the bed. He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a rough cough, and Harry hastily handed him a glass of water he conjured from nowhere. The youth accepted it automatically and drank like he was dying of thirst, splashing a few drops so that they dripped down his chin and neck like rivulets of sweat, but he didn't seem to notice or care. Harry couldn't blame him. "Where am I?" he croaked.

"Somewhere safe," Harry replied as gently as he could. "You took a nasty blow to the head, so there are probably gaps in your memory. What's the last thing you remember?" The youth's face contorted, and a look of panicked confusion began to bloom in his eyes. He shut them tightly, wrinkling the skin around them, mouthing twitching into a puzzled half-frown. "Hey, easy," Harry said quickly. "Don't force it. Just take some deep breaths and let it come naturally."

The youth closed his eyes and breathed deeply, but a moment later he was frowning in distressed confusion. "I can't," he said in a strangled voice. "I can't remember anything. I don't know where I've been. I don't know what I've been doing. My name is… no, No, NO, I - I don't remember who I am!" He nearly shouted the last words and began to take rapid, shuddering breaths, and Harry hastily began rubbing his shoulder.

"Easy. Easy. Calm down," Harry said gently. "It's alright. You're ok. You're safe. Just calm down. You're not alone…" As Harry continued to say reassuring things, a distant part of him marveled at what he was doing.

In the past, Harry had never been very good at reassuring or comforting other people. He could listen and provide a shoulder to cry on. He could offer kind words or advice. He could teach lessons. But calming someone on the verge of an emotional breakdown? That was something he'd never been able to do. His disastrous relationship with Cho Chang was proof enough of that. He simply lacked the emotional sensitivity and patience to handle her frequent bouts of crying, and he had never felt comfortable enough with her to talk about what happened in the graveyard. Yet here he was, helping a bloke not much younger than himself through a panic attack as if he were the man's father, or possibly a brother. He refused to think of what Ron or Hermione would say to that.

It took only a minute or two for the youth to regain control of himself, and when he did, he immediately recoiled from Harry's touch and swept his gaze around the room, only to frown when he saw the opaque privacy curtains. Harry recognized the tick immediately as an attempt to scan for potential exits. Why would an amnesiac nineteen-year-old behave like an experienced spy or soldier right after having a panic attack? It made no sense, unless he'd already experienced the sort of trauma that ingrained a fighter's instincts into him. Harry did _ not _ like the implications of that train of thought.

"Well mate, if you're completely amnesiac, then you're probably going to be here a while," Harry said, trying to keep his voice light. The words still came out colder than he would have preferred. "How about a nickname until you can remember your real name? I can't keep thinking of you as 'the kid' when I'm only a few years older than you."

The kid frowned, hesitating for a long moment before finally saying "Call me Tom."

Harry felt a deep stirring of unease. Without knowing how, he was absolutely certain that the youth's choice of the name 'Tom' wasn't a coincidence.

...

Time, the Ancient One mused as she waited for Harry in the courtyard where he often trained with her in private, bore characteristics reminiscent of both a river and a tree. It flowed, eddied, and bent like a river, but the river had no end; it was a wall of water constantly carving new channels for itself to flow through. The present from the point of view of the beholder was but a single drop, constantly moving down the river. The stretches of river the drop had already flowed through were the past, and the places where the river might yet flow were the future.

At the same time, the flow of the river of time constantly branched like an ever-growing tree. Countless possible futures lay ahead, and often the most innocuous events could change the course of history. Every moment in the present had the potential to drastically alter the future, and predicting it accurately was virtually impossible. Prophecies claimed to foretell exact futures, but in truth they merely outlined a possible future and increased the chances of it coming to pass. The more people believed in prophecies, the stronger they became, but ignore a prophecy and it became less than powerless.

The Ancient One understood this better than almost anyone, for it was her job as the Sorcerer Supreme to routinely study the branches of time so as to prepare for incoming threats. She'd witnessed thousands of possible futures with each of her uses of the Eye of Agamotto, and she'd been using it regularly for nearly 700 years. Each of her sojourns through the currents of time were ingrained into her memories as surely as if she'd experienced those possibilities firsthand, and so in her mind she was countless billions of years old. The average Asgardian would outlive her by an order of magnitude, but in her mind, she was as old as their very civilization. She had _ earned _ her moniker of Ancient One.

The Ancient One had never wanted to live as long as she had. Most sorcerers had their lives naturally extended to a maximum of 300 years by their magic, but she had lived more than twice as long by breaking one of the most sacred rules of her order. She hated it, hated the way it made her feel like she was bathing in filth, but it was necessary, for she had come to power at a time when the Masters of the Mystic Arts were struggling to find new recruits amidst medieval superstition and the Black Death. None of the sorcerers she had encountered since the death of her predecessor displayed the combination of power, skill, creativity, morals, and leadership needed to become Sorcerer Supreme, and so she had sought to extend her own life until such time as she could find a worthy successor. She thought she'd found one in Stephen Strange, who had an astonishing capacity for selflessness when stripped of his worldly ego and a natural talent for the Mystic Arts that rivaled her own, and it was just as well she had.

The Ancient One had paid a hefty price for her immortality. To survive this long untouched by time, she had had to sacrifice part of her identity, her very name, lest the source of her longevity turn her into a monster as horrible as any she had fought over the years. It was a bitter price to pay, but she'd had no choice at the time. Now, her glimpses into the immediate future told her that her borrowed time was coming to an end. She had known it was inevitable, but what she saw coming was proof enough that even with all her power, skill, and experience, she had underestimated the consequences of the ritual.

By drawing power from the Dark Dimension she'd made herself immune to the ravages of time and opened herself to other dangers that were arguably worse. She'd taken precautions to guard herself from Dormammu's influence, but even while her mind and body were safe, her fate was not. The longer she lived, the easier it became for Dormammu to subtly alter the way events played out around her. Slowly but surely her luck had worsened over the years, exacerbating the consequences of her failures and raising the stakes of any risks she took.

With the betrayal of Kaecilius, Dormammu had the perfect tool to bring about her downfall. He was her best student in centuries, a prodigy who could have succeeded her if only he'd learned to let go of his desire to see his dead family again, and with Dormammu backing him his chances of successfully killing her grew exponentially, even without being able to draw power directly from the Dark Dimension. Worse, Kaecilius had the potential to tear the Masters of the Mystic Arts apart simply by revealing her secret. Already he'd led so many astray with promises of power and immortality.

The Ancient One's chances of surviving the inevitable confrontation grew slimmer by the year, and even if she did, she'd only guarantee the world's doom at a later date by doing so. She'd told Harry Potter that the events leading to her death were inevitable, but it was more complicated than that. Just as Harry had once sacrificed himself for the sake of others, she too would have to die if the world was to survive.

She desperately hoped that he'd forgive her.

The Ancient One heard voices, and she turned away from the view of Kathmandu to find Harry, dressed in regular civilian clothing, escorting his younger charge from the Hulk incident. There was something about the youth she couldn't quite place. A sense of unease, mingled with confusion and, bizarrely, anticipation. Years of peering through time had given the Ancient One a unique insight into the workings of the time stream. It was said the wing-flap of a butterfly in England could cause a hurricane in Texas, and she could sometimes sense when the potential paths of a person's life had been radically altered. It was rare, for causality was an infinitely varied thing, but sometimes a person's circumstances trapped them so completely that it took a drastic, life-changing event to free them from their fate.

As the Ancient One looked at Harry's confused and apprehensive new friend, who had nicknamed himself 'Tom' in lieu of being unable to remember anything about himself, she knew that she was looking at someone whose life path had been fixed as tightly as the cables of a suspension bridge before being snapped free by an encounter with Harry Potter. _ None _ of the Ancient One's viewings through the Eye had thus far included this youth.

It took the Ancient One a moment to realize that Harry was asking her something. "I beg your pardon?" she said hastily, concealing her embarrassment and a tingle of surprise. Harry never interrupted her when he thought she was lost in thought.

"Do you think you can help him?" Harry asked her again, indicating Tom, who was staring at them with what would have been well-concealed unease in a civilian setting but was rather transparent in Kamar-Taj.

The Ancient One forced herself to focus. She should not be this flustered by a branching of the tree of time. What was wrong with her? With uncharacteristically curt gestures, she led the two men to the chamber where she kept the Eye of Agamotto. If her temporal senses were to be trusted, this situation warranted another set of viewings.

Hours later, Tom had been sent to his new quarters in Kamar-Taj, and Harry was preparing to open a portal back home when the Ancient One grabbed him by the arm to stop him. Harry stared at her with a blank expression, a subtle parting of his lips the only indication of his shock. Breaking one's normal behavior patterns was often an effective way to get someone's attention, which was why the Ancient One rarely deviated from her usual polite, friendly demeanor.

"When I tried to look into Tom's future," she said in a low, hard voice, "I saw flashes of more possibilities than I bothered to count, and none with enough detail to give me so much as a hint of what his fate is from this point forward. I had to look into his past to gain an inkling of who he is, and when I did, it confirmed what I suspected the moment I saw him."

"And that is?" Harry asked tonelessly.

The Ancient One allowed herself a tiny scowl. "I am taking a great gamble by letting that man study the Mystic Arts. He suffered a great deal before you found him, and that suffering was molding him into something dangerous. Without those memories clouding his thoughts he will begin to discover his true self, but eventually they will resurface. Sooner or later he will remember who he was before you brought him here, and he will have to make a choice. If he chooses wrong, I will kill him."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but the Ancient One tightened her grip on his arm, stifling his response with a look that could freeze lava. "Tom could become a hero of the Mystic Arts, but there is an equal chance he will become our downfall. I took a gamble like that once before with Kaecilius and lost. He could have succeeded me as Sorcerer Supreme if he had only taken my lessons to heart, but he only saw what he wanted to see and decided to walk away from Kamar-Ta. I knew then there was a chance he would make me regret teaching him so much as how to read Sanskrit, but I let my affection for him cloud my judgement and allowed him to walk free. Now he is working to destroy us all, and until he makes his move there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I will _ not _ make that mistake with Tom. If I see him take one step too far down the path leads to him betraying us, I will not be merciful. I _ cannot _."

Harry gave her a long, measured look, then, very slowly, nodded in acceptance. Then, wrenched himself free from her grip and vanished with an unusually loud _ crack _ that actually made her flinch. Shaking her head, the Ancient One decided she needed sleep. She all but ran to her own chambers, barely pausing to wish Dr. Banner a good evening as he limped towards his own room, his skin tinged faintly green.

Master Hamir had always been a tough teacher, and not even the Hulk's advanced durability protected him from stinging spells. The thought of the creature hopping around clutching his bottom yelling in pain and outrage was almost enough to make the Ancient One smile.

Almost.

_ The Triskelion, Washington DC, USA, August of 2003 _

It took all of Nick Fury's self-control not to glare at the paper report Agent Romanoff had slipped into his desk.

Fury was loathe to trust Phoenix, an actual, damnable _ wizard _, to so much as pour him a cup of tea, but the strange man had proved the validity of his claims regarding his abilities and allegiances in a way that Nick simply could not deny or ignore. The purpose of the meeting in the New York warehouse had been to set up a more reliable working relationship with Phoenix, who in turn had turned it into a conspiracy to protect the rights of superhumans. They were not out to start a revolution so much as pave the way for a new civil rights movement.

Shortly before the end of that meeting, Coulson had asked Phoenix point blank if he could read minds, recalling a statement the wizard had made about linking his consciousness to Nick's. With obvious reluctance, Phoenix had replied in the affirmative, and Fury had nearly had a conniption. Then, he'd taken a deep breath and asked for proof. It ought have been such a simple thing: what were the names of every single SHIELD agent present at the docks during the meeting, their locations in relation to the warehouse, and what were they thinking of at that exact moment?

Phoenix had appeared to cock his hooded head to one side, then proceeded to not only name everyone present, but to say their full names in the exact same voice the agents themselves used when identifying themselves for the record before interviews (Fury had checked the security feeds from such meetings himself afterwards and made sure). He listed their locations with pinpoint accuracy as well, as corroborated by the GPS trackers everyone present had been wearing (advanced Stark tech not yet ready for use even by the military). When he began listing what they were thinking, though, he'd noted, with a hint of unease, that half of them seemed to be under the impression that they answered to a boss much scarier and more powerful than Nick Fury, a boss who had very different ideas on how to deal with enhanced individuals. Unnerved, Fury had told Phoenix to stop, and the wizard had stopped. Then he'd washed away Nick's fatigue and vanished to who knew where.

Now, looking back, he found himself desperately wishing he'd told Phoenix to go farther. He wished he'd authorized Phoenix to sift through the minds of every agent of SHIELD at that goddamn warehouse until he knew them better than they knew themselves.

Because SHIELD was compromised. Fury wasn't sure who was in on it or for how long it had been happening, but he knew the conspiracy was real, and he was fairly certain that the ringleader was Alexander Pierce, one of his oldest friends and supporters during his spy career. He had become suspicious of Pierce when Phoenix noted that many of the agents at the warehouse district were loyal to someone who was not Nick Fury. All of those agents had been hand picked by Alexander Pierce.

Pierce was the one who paved the way for Fury to take the directorship, Pierce who helped him stand up to the World Security Council when they had their heads stuck especially far up their asses, Pierce who had invited Nick to his daughter's birthdays and comforted him when the stress of his job got to him.

Alexander Pierce, who agents Romanoff and Barton had observed locking himself in a secure room and, via listening devices planted beforehand, overheard a phone conversation where Pierce had given someone orders; orders to awaken 'The Asset' and send him after a senator who was calling for the resignation of Thaddeus Ross.

Nick had no idea how deeply this conspiracy ran. He had always been a touch paranoid, a trait that had served him well in his spy career, but there were times even he thought he was taking it too far. As of right now, however, it seemed he hadn't been paranoid enough. The only people he was certain he could trust were Barton, Romanoff, and Coulson. Maria Hill was too new to his circle of elite agents to be a certainty.

Pierce didn't know Fury was on to him. Phoenix could likely extract all the intel Fury needed right then and there without Pierce ever knowing, and he had said to call in case of an emergency. Fury doubted the wizard would be happy to hear from him again so soon, but Nick was fairly certain he'd agree that this qualified as a major crisis. He reached into his trench coat pocket and pulled out the burner phone Phoenix had given him at their meeting, a more secure alternative to the number on parchment. He was about to press the call button when he noticed it. A trio of thin, shallow grooves on one side of the flip phone's keypad, so tiny he could barely feel it. There should have been only two grooves on each side of the keypad, not three. Looking at the phone more closely, Fury saw that the buttons were just slightly the wrong shape, and he felt his blood run cold.

This wasn't the phone Phoenix had given him. Oh, it had the correct display and the single contact, and the lack of apps, but it was not The Phone. It was a fake, and almost certainly wire tapped. Which meant that sometime after the meeting in the warehouse, someone had managed to swipe the original from his coat and replace it with this one. When could they have done that?

Unbidden, an image rose up from the depths of Nick's memory; Pierce nattering enthusiastically about the new electronic locks he had had installed on every secure door in the Triskelion. They would provide cutting edge protection, he had said. Once a door outfitted with such a device was locked, only a special code could unlock it. Nick had made a habit of locking his office door with the device whenever he used the ensuite bathroom just in case someone tried to get in while he was on the john. He often left his trench coat hanging over his chair when he did this, finding it too cumbersome to take into the bathroom.

Only two people in all of SHIELD knew the access code to override Fury's door. Coulson was one. Pierce was another. Either Pierce had stolen the phone himself, or he'd used an accomplice.

Alexander Pierce, a confirmed traitor, had replaced the only secure device that Fury could use to contact Phoenix from anywhere in the world with one that could record their conversations. The wizard was out of reach right when Fury needed him most.

He wanted to scream.

**[Edit: The contents of the Announcement are now resolved; please ignore it]**

**When I first began writing this story, I decided that romance wouldn't be very prominent, and while I thought I'd picked an ideal pairing for Harry, now I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm seriously considering making this a full Gen fic (no romance at all). I know this may be upsetting, but hear me out.**

**This version of Harry is stranded in a world where he doesn't belong, struggling with a power that could kill billions if he ever loses control of it, and raising a young child almost by himself. He doesn't have time for romance, nor does he have the personal freedom to indulge in one-night stands. Even if he did, getting intimate could cause him to lose control and accidentally kill his partner. Worse, if he falls in love with the wrong person and gets his heart broken, there's a very real risk he'll become the Dark Phoenix.**

**Therefore, Harry is going to be extremely picky about who he lets into his heart. More than simply having chemistry with him, they must be relatively close to his age, they must empathize with his unique circumstances (his immense personal loss and/or the risks if he loses control of his emotions), they are unafraid of his powers and respect/appreciate him for who he is, and they make a good co-parent for Teddy. Naturally, this rules out most potential ships.**

**This is the one aspect of the story where I'm asking for ideas from you, the readers, but before you start posting ideas, let me make one thing clear: as long as the potential partner meets the above criteria, I really don't care about their gender. If this surprises or confuses anyone, I strongly recommend reading my profile, where my preferences and opinions are listed. This is not going to be a quick or easy decision, but if I'm not satisfied with any of the suggestions I see, the fic will be Gen.**

**[Edit: I've made a poll of the most obvious choices on this subject. I won't necessarily choose the pairing with the most votes, but it will make it easier for me to gauge everyone's opinions. You can find it in my profile.]**


	10. 10: The Spies Who Knew Too Much

**First of all, let me just say that I am absolutely thrilled by the response to my plea for help at the end of the last chapter. To say that everyone who put in their two cents was a big help would be a bit of an understatement. I have read each and every one of those reviews, and I am about halfway to making a decision. The word vomit below will explain what I've come up with so far, if you're interested. Or you can just skip to the good part.**

**I have already elected not to make this story slash, mainly because a) it would detract too much from the main plot, and b) I can't justify a sexuality change when so much is already going on. The fact is that writing slash between canonically straight characters would draw too much attention away from the main plot points, which I want to avoid, never mind the inevitable OOC issue. However, no multi-chaptered Harry-centric fanfic would be complete without strong bonds of love and friendship. His need for love and acceptance is one of his defining character traits, and denying him such relationships would be downright cruel. In this particular story, the same issues that would scare him away from relationships of any sort also make positive relationships all the more essential. He's a single parent with a huge burden of responsibility on his shoulders, he knows that his primary source of emotional support is counting down the days to her own demise, and he's young, so it would be OOC for him not to want the sort of comfort and support a romantic partner would provide. That doesn't mean he's going to be some hopeless romantic, of course, but the point still stands. At the very least he needs at least one close confidant he can count on the way he counted on Ron and Hermione. Therefore, a certain pair of future Avengers will end up being Harry's best friends (three guesses who), and while, for obvious reasons, he won't have any romantic entanglements for a long time yet, that doesn't mean he won't eventually find love. My rule of thumb is that it will be written such that if I were to nix the romance, the overall plot would remain unchanged.**

**And that's that, no substitutions, take-backs, switches, or blatant lies. I've laid my thoughts bare for all to see, so I feel justified in saying that my decision is final. A bit ironic that I made such a big deal about what will end up being a minor plot point, perhaps, but that goes to show how much it actually bothered me. Then again, I've been told I have a penchant for being dramatic. The Poll I made is now closed.**

**Kudos to those reviewers have correctly guessed Tom's real identity! Also, since at least one reviewer alluded to it, let me clarify something: I hate the Drarry ship with every fiber of my soul, and I will continue to hate it until my dying day, as anyone who has thoroughly read my profile ought to know.**

**Please note that any political figures mentioned in this story are fictional. Some are creations of Marvel, while others, such as the one in this chapter, are my OCs, who will not be recurring characters. I have no desire to bring real world politics into my writing; my goal is to entertain, not to spread an ideology.**

**I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.**

**...**

_ Four Seasons Hotel, Houston, Texas, August of 2003 _

Natasha Romanoff had spent most of her relatively short life assassinating people like Senator Yasnah Grant. Young, idealistic, and honorable, especially compared with her peers on the modern political stage, Grant was a tall, willowy woman with coppery skin, lustrous black hair, and rather plain features. Rumor had it that Grant held Wakandan ancestry, a notion encouraged by her confirmed biracial status and the lack of information on her parents; as an infant she had been found on the doorstep of an orphanage in a pile of dirty blankets with her name on a card tucked into the folds.

Natasha didn't particularly care about the juicy gossip surrounding the senator or her history. What she did care about was the fact that Alexander Pierce had ordered her death to prevent her from "making trouble," for Thaddeus Ross, who was, apparently, "too useful a pawn to be allowed out of office."

The knowledge that SHIELD was compromised affected Natasha far more deeply than she was willing to admit. She had been developing a genuine fondness for the organization, and she was beginning to think of Clint as the older brother she had never had. Phil Coulson had been a phenomenal handler, and she had a healthy respect for Nick Fury. She had only worked with them for a little over three years, yet, in defiance of everything her upbringing had taught her, she trusted them.

Everyone else, well… She liked some of her colleagues and some of them liked her, and while she didn't exactly think of most of them as friends, there was a certain camaraderie that only formed between people who routinely worked together in life-threatening situations. The idea that all of those little connections and bonds might be built on lies reminded her uncannily of what the Room had been pulling in the months leading up to her first meeting with Clint and subsequent escape. Needless to say, she was eager to stamp out the nest of vipers she had helped uncover.

When Fury had arranged a meeting between the four of them to discuss the matter, and how to deal with it with Phoenix seemingly out of reach, Natasha had immediately put herself forward for the role of bodyguard for Senator Grant, which was how she found herself holding a flute of sparkling apple juice in lieu of champagne as the senator gave a speech condemning the war in Iraq and General Ross's abuse of power by taking American soldiers into Canada. Natasha didn't normally care for politics either way, despite part she had once played in the more visceral side of the game, but even she had to admit it was _ incredibly _ stupid of Ross to do what he did. To say that the Canadians were furious was a bit of an understatement. Senator Grant certainly had plenty of ammunition, and those who agreed with her were starting to speak up, emboldened by her speeches, such as the one she was making now to a crowd of wealthy, like-minded celebrities. It was no wonder she had made enemies.

The senator was holding court in a small ballroom of the Four Seasons hotel, which was luxurious enough to be mistaken for a queen's palace, with polished grey stone floor tiles covered in plush rugs the color of fresh snow, dark wood furnishings with cream, grey, and navy upholstery, and crystal chandeliers. Just under four dozen guests filled the room, listening to Grant's impassioned speech with almost comical rapture. They hung onto her words like fish on baited hooks, shouting in assent or condemnation in all the right places, and reminding Natasha so vividly of a flock of sheep that she had to suppress a snort. She had long since perfected the art of looking avidly interested in what was happening around her while inwardly being anything but, yet it didn't change the reality.

Eventually, the speeches came to an end, and the crowd dispersed to focus on the mixture of hand-shaking, casual conversation, and forced camaraderie that characterized a political gathering. Soon, the guests were milling about in their fancy suits and dresses with flutes of champagne or glasses of wine in their hands, their conversations creating a buzz of noise that Natasha could have done without. She herself had managed to fool the crowd into thinking she was well on her way to getting as drunk as anyone else by filling her own champagne flute with sparkling apple juice, swaying deliberately when she walked, but doggedly shadowing the movements of the senator.

Eventually, Natasha found herself seated at the bar, her left arm resting on the black and white marble counter, a stone's throw away from the senator, who was engrossed in what appeared to be serious conversation with an oil tycoon whose name Natasha couldn't remember. She hid a grimace as she sipped her sparkling apple juice and scanned the room. To most, she looked like just another rich guest invited for political reasons and dressed suitably for the occasion in a simple yet elegant black silk dress that fit her snuggly enough to show off her figure and an elaborate shawl of thick black fur (artificial, she had been assured). The shawl seemed a strange choice of apparel given the heat and humidity outside, but Houstonians seemed to think that the best way to counter their city's infamous summer heat waves was to turn every indoor public setting into a freezer.

Natasha had long since learned how to ignore the heat or the cold when necessary, but she was more than happy to use the excuse of temperature related discomfort to carry the shawl wherever she went, as it concealed what her revealing dress could not, a set of knives in arm sheathes on her upper arms. Her elaborate leather bracelet and shiny silver watch each hid one of the special taser launchers she favored, affectionately nicknamed her "Widow's Bite," which delivered a shock that could knock out an angry bull with one shot. She'd dyed her hair platinum blond and styled it short and wavy, and she'd applied garish red lipstick so that she looked like a vampire. Her glossy black purse was barely large enough to hide her pistol, and the heels of her matching shoes could be easily snapped off to turn them into slippers. She hoped the little ensemble would be enough.

Her precautions were probably unnecessary, though. It was highly unlikely that the 'Asset' would strike now, when the target was surrounded by so many high profile figures. A public assassination would draw too much inconvenient attention.

Then again, the assassination order itself seemed an inelegant, even foolish decision on Pierce's part. A young, charismatic politician with a tantalizingly mysterious past speaks out against the old fashioned, decorated, possibly war mongering general who has just ruined the relationship between the United States and the nation with which it shared its largest (and most peaceful) border, only to be suddenly assassinated just as her cause begins to gain real traction. Such a turn of events would only turn the senator into a martyr and make those who agreed with her shout that much louder in her memory, especially in the wake of such scandals as Watergate, which had shattered much of the American population's faith in its leaders. A man with Alexander Pierce's position and responsibilities ought to know that, yet he'd ordered the senator's death regardless.

Why?

Natasha continued to silently ponder the question even as she accompanied a half drunk senator Grant back to her suite in the hotel's penthouse, surrounded by a squad of four secret service agents. The five of them were the only ones in the hotel, the only people in the state for that matter, who knew that Natasha was not, in fact, the senator's new personal secretary hired for her pretty face, but rather an extremely dangerous agent of SHIELD tasked with preventing a possible assassination attempt.

As soon as they reached the relative safety of the senator's penthouse, Natasha dropped her drunken mask, as did the senator. The Black Widow hadn't been the only one who'd been sipping sparkling apple juice in that room.

"Did you see anything?" Grant asked intently.

Natasha shook her head, depositing her furry shawl onto a white duvet and rolling her shoulders. "I didn't expect anything to happen in there," she said with false nonchalance. "Whoever this is, whatever they want, they can't risk drawing too much attention to themselves, and there were too many high profile people in that room. If they made a move while you were in there, nothing short of a suicide vest or a cyanide pill would save an assassin from the interrogation room."

"I still don't understand why anyone would want me dead," the senator groaned as she flopped into an armchair. "Killing me won't do Ross any favors. If anything, it will make him look worse. Even if he had nothing to do with it, an assassination would still turn me into a martyr."

Natasha smiled thinly as she pulled off her dress, revealing a thin black underoutfit that hugged her body and left nothing to the imagination. They had had this discussion before, but she hadn't dared voice the most plausible theory aloud for fear of discovery (only three other people were supposed to know her current whereabouts, and Alexander Pierce wasn't one of them; even the senator was ignorant of her true identity and her employers).

Whatever Alexander Pierce and his co-conspirators were up to was not meant to come to fruition for many years. They were playing the long game, content to wait patiently for all the pieces on their chess board to fall into place of their own accord and nudging them along in the right direction only in the most subtle and covert ways; a bribe here, a convenient death there, a piece of withheld information when it suited them. Their plan, whatever it was, mirrored the effects of a slow acting but lethal poison, or perhaps a cancer cell. Hidden in plain sight, yet spreading slowly and inexorably through a system. At first, the victim simply wouldn't feel right. Then they would fall ill and ultimately succumb, sometimes in dramatic fashion. Yet, something, or rather someone, had inadvertently begun administering an antidote to Pierce's poison. Namely, a green clad telekinetic who called himself Phoenix and was, apparently, far more powerful than initial assessments had indicated.

In the reports they published after meeting with the mysterious being, Fury and Coulson recounted how Phoenix had effortlessly found and destroyed the listening devices which had been smuggled into the warehouse before he'd even sat down at the table. According to Phoenix, Dr. Bruce Banner's monstrous green form was strong enough to set off catastrophic earthquakes if provoked, confirming that the creature was a far greater threat than previously thought. Further, Phoenix was, by his own admission, growing more powerful by the week and that in a few years he could "flatten" Banner as effortlessly as he'd disabled the listening devices. The World Security Council had been less than pleased with this news, not that Natasha blamed them, but for her the most interesting part was Phoenix's determination to start a kind of civil rights movement for people with superhuman abilities.

Natasha wasn't sure how she felt about that. She wasn't heartless enough to claim that having special powers made one sub-human, but everything she had been taught by both SHIELD and the Red Room told her that anyone could be a threat. Anyone could be a danger to society simply with their regular human abilities; Clint was proof enough of that. Add in superhuman powers, and an individual's inherent threat level increased considerably, no matter their disposition. Hell, simple logic dictated that a serial killer who could make things move without touching them was infinitely more dangerous than one who could not, regardless of their personal foibles and eccentricities.

It didn't help that there was something undeniably inhuman about Phoenix himself. She had felt it when he'd confronted her and Clint in Nepal, felt the way his mere presence had filled her with the urge to flee for her life. Still, Natasha had to admit that Phoenix had a point about the social inequality between regular people and those with superhuman powers.

After the second World War ended, there had been an explosion of attempts to replicate the legendary super soldier serum. Everyone and their mother wanted their own version of Captain America, and so human experimentation became frighteningly popular, especially in the two decades immediately following the war. Hundreds of people had been kidnapped and subjected to horrifying experiments in genetics and body modification. Most of the victims died, and many of the survivors went insane. Very few actually developed powers, and the results were either inferior to the original perfected serum or caused the recipient to self-destruct after a few weeks. Many of the survivors of these experiments had started families and inadvertently passed on some beneficial mutations to their children, giving birth to much more powerful and stable mutants in the process. Still, regardless of how they had come to be, all of them faced discrimination and fear from everyday people, and worse at the hands of criminals and less scrupulous governments.

Some fourteen years ago, a Ukrainian man had discovered he had the ability to manipulate and absorb radiation who had taken to sneaking into the Chernobyl exclusion zone, using his powers to cleanse the region of the vast amounts of radiation it had been soaked in. He never hurt anyone, and in fact it was suspected he had used his abilities to heal the construction workers who built the containment structures around the remains of the destroyed nuclear plant. As far as Natasha was concerned, that made the man something of a hero, but when his secret was discovered by the community, he was shunned and subjected to discriminatory behaviour reminiscent of the Jim Crow era southern United States. By the time SHIELD intervened it was too late; the man had been murdered by an off duty soldier, who got off scot free despite the overwhelming evidence against him.

Natasha vividly recalled dismantling an illegal lab where a man who could produce pheromones that soothed strong emotions was being harvested alive in hopes of creating potent mind control drugs. In one of his first missions for SHIELD, Clint had rescued a pair of hollow-boned teenagers with wings sprouting from their backs that allowed them to fly from a sex trafficking ring. The very mission that ended Natasha's probationary period with the organization had involved a child with the ability to change her appearance who had been abandoned by her own parents, been treated as subhuman by the foster system, and ultimately ended up in the merciless clutches of a Russian lab affiliated with the Red Room. She still occasionally had nightmares about what she'd seen on that misadventure, and in the aftermath, nothing had been done to punish the foster parents who had abused the girl in the first place.

Yes, Natasha thought. As terrifyingly dangerous as superhumans could be, it was undeniable that they needed to be protected from ordinary people just as much as the latter needed to be protected from them.

No sooner had Natasha reached this conclusion than the sound of glass shattering snapped her out of her musings. "And there's that assassin," she said in a bored tone as she sprang to her feet. Immediately the four secret service men moved to surround the Senator, and they retreated towards the suite's foyer.

Natasha slammed her shoes hard into the floor, one after the other, snapping off the high heels and adjusting her posture to one suitable for combat. She had her pistol in both hands when a grenade rolled through the open door to the senator's bedroom. At once she lashed out with her slippered foot, kicking it back the way it had come before diving for the wall beside the doorway.

The grenade detonated with a deafening _ BANG _ that almost made Natasha drop her weapon. The explosion shook the entire floor of the hotel, and small flames billowed out from the bedroom. Motes of dust rained down from the ceiling, and smoke enshrouded the entire suite.

Shaking her head to clear it, Natasha raised her pistol as a shadowy figure emerged from the doorway, seemingly unscathed by the detonation, aimed at where the head seemed to be, and fired. To her astonishment, her shot ricocheted off of something metallic in a shower of sparks and shattered a light fixture. Immediately she changed tactics. In an enclosed space like this a gun was just as dangerous to the wielder as to anybody else, so she pulled a knife from her arm sheathe and darted forward, striking at her opponent's midsection.

The other assassin was quick. They lashed out with one hand, and Natasha's bewilderment increased when she felt cold metal fingers close around her wrist, squeezing so hard it was all she could do not to drop the knife. Refusing to let her shock show she lashed out with her other hand, intending to slam the butt of her pistol into the other's face, but they leaned out of the way and twisted around, throwing Natasha across the room like a ragdoll. She slammed into an overturned armchair, and pain shot through her back as one of the wooden legs splintered slightly with the force of her impact.

Disoriented, Natasha groaned as she struggled to force herself back to her feet. She fully expected the assassin to finish her then and there, but she felt no cold metal close around her throat, no booted foot slam into her rib cage. Instead, she heard rapid foot falls, shouts of alarm, and gunfire.

By the time Natasha had recovered fully and moved to retrieve her weapons, cursing when she found that her pistol had been crushed into a misshapen hunk of useless black metal, the fight had moved out into the hallway. Emerging from the penthouse suite, she saw one of the secret service men slumped against a wall with his neck hanging at an unnatural angle. Further down, she saw a male figure she didn't recognize brutally slam a metallic fist into another agent's face, smashing his nose and likely shattering cheek bones.

As the assassin turned away from his second kill, Natasha got her first full frontal look at him. He was tall, of a height with Clint, and had shaggy brown hair that hung to his shoulders. A simple black mask covered his face and neck from the nose down, and a set of goggles hid his eyes. He wore black combat fatigues of a cut she didn't recognize and had an assortment of knives and hand guns on his belt, though it was clear he didn't feel the need to use them just yet, as his hands were empty. Most striking, however, was his left arm, which appeared to be completely made of metal, unadorned save for a red star painted over the shoulder. For an instant Natasha wondered if it was encased in armor of some sort, but the dimensions didn't match that assessment; it was exactly the same size as his right arm, which meant it was a mechanical prosthetic, and when she realized that, Natasha's blood ran cold.

The intelligence community was rife with rumors and ghost stories, the remnants of unsolved instances of espionage. One of the most infamous such ghost stories was the Winter Soldier, an extremely dangerous assassin credited with dozens of kills going back all the way to the sixties and identified solely by his signature metal arm. Natasha had always secretly wondered how well she might stand up to the Winter Soldier in a fight, but she'd never had any real desire to find out.

_ You can't always have what you want _, she thought dryly as she brought her Widow's Bite to bear. She fired two taser discs in quick succession, each aimed at different limbs. To her astonishment, the soldier leaped into the air and spun like an acrobat, neatly avoiding both projectiles, which slammed harmlessly into the far wall, narrowly missing the fleeing senator Grant and her surviving guards.

Natasha charged, firing a third taser disc at the Soldier, who rolled along the carpeted floor to avoid it before leaping to his feet to redirect Natasha's first punch with his flesh arm. Then Natasha's perception of events became a blur as she fell back on combat instincts that had been drilled into her since she was six years old. Her every move was pulled from muscle memory, her mind oddly disconnected from the fight.

The Soldier was bigger than her, yet he moved so fast it was all she could do to avoid getting her face smashed by his bionic arm, and she knew instinctively that even his flesh limbs were significantly stronger than she was. In seconds she was on the defensive, struggling to evade strikes that whistled through the still air with such force they left faint winds in their wake.

The Soldier aimed a punch at her throat with his bionic arm, and Natasha barely slid to the side. As the metal fist smashed clean through the painted sheetrock of the wall, she pulled another knife from her shoulder sheath and plunged it towards the Soldier's flesh arm. Instantly he'd brought his hand up and caught her wrist, stopping the attack cold. He yanked his bionic arm from the wall, showering them both with dust and leaving behind a ragged hole, but Natasha ducked under the blow and jabbed her free hand towards his throat. He released her knife hand and deflected her strike with his gauntleted wrist, then leaned backward to avoid a slash aimed at his face.

The Soldier's bionic arm snapped forward once more, but Natasha ducked again and aimed a vicious kick at his groin. To her surprise, he allowed the blow to connect, and he barely flinched when it did. A split second later he was lashing out with a lateral kick of his own, meant to sweep Natasha off her feet and send her crashing to the ground. Instead she back flipped, taking advantage of their proximity by deliberately slamming the tips of her feet into his maked chin.

As the Soldier's head snapped backward in retreat, Natasha landed, somewhat clumsily by her standards, sprang up with her arm extended, and activated her Widow's Bite yet again. This time, the taser disc struck the Soldier directly in the center of his chest, and he spasmed like a victim of an epileptic seizure as the intense electrical charge coursed through him.

For a moment, it seemed Natasha had won. Then, to her astonishment, he began to move his flesh arm up towards the disc. Immediately Natasha fired a second one into his leg, and he stumbled but, incredibly, remained on his feet.

A single taser disc should have left him unconscious, jerking and twitching on the floor. Two should have killed him outright. Natasha's goal was to protect Senator Grant and capture the so-called 'Asset' if possible. No one had suspected that it was the Winter Soldier, and all hopes she'd had of beating him were evaporating. He was just as skilled a combatant as she was, but he had the advantage of being significantly faster and stronger than her; too strong and fast for an ordinary human.

Decision made, Natasha leaped forward over the Soldier's twitching head as he yanked the first taser disc off his chest and wrapped her legs around his neck, sending them both crashing to the carpeted floor. She rolled with the impact, flipping forward on her hands like a gymnast and landing in a graceful crouch. Then she was running as fast as her slippered feet could carry her down the hall to the elevators.

If the Senator and her remaining protectors were following the plan, then they had taken the stairs down towards the parking garage. Sure enough, when Natasha yanked open the door to the stairwell and looked down, she caught sight of the trio rushing down the flights of concrete steps a few stories below. Immediately she took off down the stairs in pursuit, her mind racing. If she stuck close to them, the Soldier would only have to go one direction to get to them. She had to lead him on a wild goose chase, or it would all be for nothing.

The secret service man behind the Senator almost shot Natasha when she caught up with him. She waved away his apology. "Take the elevator down."

"Are you out of your mind?" the Senator demanded. "He'll catch us before it arrives!"

"Not if I lead him away," Natasha corrected, shoving the nearest door open to another hallway. "I need your spare pistols," she added, looking at the secret service men. "Get to the parking garage. I'll meet you at the street exit. There's no time to argue. Go!"

To their credit, the agents immediately passed her the extra pistols concealed in their suits' inner pockets and began hustling the Senator out into the hallway beyond. She deactivated the safeties on each of the guns as the door closed behind them and turned, pointing them upward into the stairwell. A split second later, the door to the highest level, three stories up, banged open. The Soldier leaned over the handrail cautiously, clutching a minigun, but Natasha was already firing her new pistols.

Instantly the Soldier jerked backward out of range of the hail of bullets so that they sprayed against the metal handrails and concrete walls, generating sparks and puffs of dust as they ricocheted. Natasha moved down the stairwell, keeping her eyes trained on the Soldier and firing intermittently, uncaring of the numerous ricochets; she had a nasty feeling that even if she stopped, the Soldier would keep firing regardless of the risk to himself, and he had the advantage of an elevated position.

Sure enough, the instant her barrage of intermittent fire faltered he was leaning over the side of the safety rail and firing his own weapon, and it was all Natasha could do to dive down a flight of steps to a platform directly underneath the Soldier's own position, where he could not see her. She could hear him rushing downward, his footfalls much louder and more rapid than what should be humanly possible, and she rushed down another flight to the nearest door.

Kicking it open, she dashed out into the hallway and deliberately slammed it shut behind her. He would know where she'd gone, and that was exactly what she wanted. Turning, she saw a startled looking family of four staring at her, wide eyed. The father hastily leaned down and scooped up his small children, a boy and a girl who didn't look a day older than four. They looked as if they were just returning from a long day at the pool.

"Get back to your room and hide!" she ordered. "There's an active shooter coming this way. Go, go!" The parents, fortunately, didn't need to be told twice. They turned tail and ran.

Natasha ran the opposite direction, heading for the corner of the hallway where it followed the shape of the building's exterior. As she ducked behind the wall the doors to the stairwell from which she'd come banged open, and she peered around the corner to find the Soldier stalking out into the hallway, still clutching his minigun. It was impossible to see his expression behind that mask and the dark goggles, but Natasha had the distinct impression he was irritated.

The Soldier's head twitched, and he brought his gun up. Now it was Natasha's turn to lean back behind cover as bullets zipped past her to blast holes in the wall. Crouching beneath the line of fire, she leaned around the corner and fired a few shots of her own, but the awkward angle threw off her aim. Worse, the Soldier had spotted her, predicted the trajectory of her shots, and was already halfway out of the line of fire by the time she pulled the triggers of her pistols.

_ Damn. _ Even she couldn't dodge bullets that easily.

The Soldier maintained a steady stream of fire as he advanced, forcing Natasha to remain behind the wall. Once he reached the corner, though, it would be all over. Unless…

Natasha set down one of her pistols and reached for the tiny utility belt of her black shift, pulling off a taser disc that was significantly larger than those fired from her wrist launchers. She fiddled with the activation dial and then, carefully, reached around the corner and rolled the disc down the carpeted floor like a grenade.

The stream of gunfire faltered, and Natasha took off down her own stretch of empty hallway. As she reached the next corner she heard a sharp snap-crackle sound and groan of pain from behind, and she allowed herself a grim twitch of her lips. The larger taser discs were known to become highly magnetized when activated, which wasn't good if you happened to have a metal limb and got near one.

As the Soldier struggled with the taser disc, Natasha made a beeline for a bank of elevators down the hallway and frantically pressed the call button for down. She didn't really expect it to arrive in time, but it wouldn't matter either way. As the Soldier's footsteps resumed, she began her own barrage of intermittent gunfire, strafing the corner wall behind which she'd initially hidden herself. The Soldier's approach faltered. A few seconds later, the elevator doors opened with a pleasant chime.

Instantly Natasha dived inside and jammed her finger against the close button. Seconds later, the Soldier had placed his bionic arm between the closing doors, warping the metal with a horrible groaning sound. Without hesitation Natasha shot him in the chest and stomach. She would have aimed for his face, but the position of his arm was guaranteed to deflect any bullets. As it was, her shots made the Soldier stagger backward, clutching his torso, and the doors began to slide closed. Natasha shoved the close button down again with her thumb, holding it there until the doors slid closed once more. She heard the Soldier banging his fist against them outside, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that he'd just been shot, but she pressed the button for the ground floor, and the car began to descend.

Natasha took the opportunity to reload her pistols and move her last pair of knives to belt sheathes. Her outfit was so thin it was a wonder the weight of the blades didn't pull it off her shoulders. The elevator chimed as it reached the ground floor, and Natasha hastened out, ignoring the startled looks of the hotel guests who had been waiting outside to board. She made her way through the luxuriously appointed lobby and out into the driveway.

The hotel staff manning the valet parking service stared at her in what was either astonishment, lust, or possibly both. She ignored them too. Distantly she heard a faint crash and guessed that the Soldier had reached the lobby. _ Come on _, she thought desperately. She had known from the beginning that her ruse would not last long. And then, blessedly, the glossy black senatorial limo shot out of the yawning mouth of the parking garage. Natasha made a beeline for it, and the door to the back seat jerked open at her approach. As she jumped inside and slammed the door shut behind her she heard the sound of approaching police sirens.

Glancing around the limo as it slid into traffic, Natasha saw Senator Grant huddled on the other side of the back seat, her clothes spattered with blood. Up front sat exactly one secret service agent. "What happened?" she demanded.

"The assassin brought friends," the agent replied grimly. "Four guys in combat fatigues I've never seen before showed up in the middle of the parking garage just before we got to the limo. They pinned us down for a bit until I shot the fuel tank of a parked car and blew it up. That got their attention long enough for us to escape, but my partner didn't make it. He took a few bullets meant for the senator"

"Where's the rest of the security team?"

"No idea. I tried to comm them several times, but they never responded. I'm guessing they're dead."

Natasha stifled a groan as she reached down under her seat. She fumbled with a latching mechanism there until a hidden panel sprang open, spilling a black burlap bag onto the floor between her legs. Opening the bag, Natasha pulled out a fresh set of combat fatigues, complete with a new pair of pistols and Widow's Bites as well as a few extra bits and bobs. Ignoring the wide eyed look from Senator Grant, she began to strip out of her current outfit while at the same time barking instructions to the agent at the wheel. "We have to assume the regular rendezvous points have been compromised. They knew exactly which room to find us in, and the assassin got in from the outside easy as pie."

"Where are we going, then? City Hall?" he demanded in clear agitation.

"HPD headquarters. Then at least we'll have numbers on our side."

The agent growled but didn't argue. As the limo shot through the streets of Houston, ignoring speed limits and even stop lights, Natasha deftly wriggled into her spare outfit, a two piece black bodysuit with matching combat boots. Hearing the wail of approaching sirens, she adjusted her new weapons and glanced out the rear window to find a pair of police cruisers chasing them, closely followed by what appeared to be a black van, though Natasha couldn't be certain in the poor nighttime lighting conditions.

There was a flash of fire from the side of the van, and a hail of bullets spattered against the rear window, striking the same spot in quick succession until the last one broke through, streaking so close to Natasha's face she felt it tug her hair before crashing into the windshield and stopping cold. More shots peppered the armored limo, and Natasha cursed her inability to fire back without risk of hitting bystanders. She hated car chases.

The chase took them through darkened streets, past late night drivers who honked at them in indignation as they zoomed by. Occasionally the agent would have to take sharp turns or make unexpected detours to avoid roadblocks set up by other groups of police cruisers, more than once sending Senator Grant crashing into Natasha and vice versa. Still, she had to admit he was good at this.

By the time they reached a street intersection adjacent to the police headquarters, an austere skyscraper that was more concrete than glass, they had a small parade of law enforcement vehicles chasing them on top of the Winter Soldier and whatever allies he had at his command.

"Stay out of sight," Natasha told the senator as she kicked open her own passenger door and rolled outside, pistols in hand. Behind her she heard the Senator and the last secret service man emerge from their side of the limo to make a mad dash for the headquarters building.

The unmarked black van had stopped outside the ring of police vehicles, and it was only from the way his bionic arm gleamed in the light of the streetlamps that Natasha was able to spot the Winter Soldier as he emerged from its rear. He was holding a grenade launcher.

_ Oh come on! _

The Soldier aimed his new toy not at the Senator's limo but at the nearest police cruiser and fired. Natasha ducked back behind cover and shut her eyes. The explosion seemed oddly quiet amid the din of wailing police sirens, and when Natasha peeked around the limo door again, she saw a pair of overturned patrol cars lying blackened, burning heaps, leaving the Winter Soldier a direct path to the limo and the building beyond. Behind him, Natasha could make out two more assailants, big, brutal-faced men carrying assault rifles. This, however, the boldness that had served them so well at Four Seasons backfired. In seconds the remaining police vehicles had emptied, and their occupants poured outside, pouring gunfire in the assassin's direction.

Incredibly, the Soldier ignored the swarm of new opposition. He exchanged his grenade launcher for one of his helpers' rifles and charged Natasha's position so fast that the police were unable to track him with their shots and were ultimately forced to desist or risk hitting each other.

The Soldier leaped atop the limo and aimed his rifle down towards Natasha, but for once she was quicker. This time when she shot him, she scored a direct hit on his flesh and blood shoulder, striking the weakest point in his body armor dead on. The Soldier jerked and faltered, but instead of letting go of the rifle, he used his bionic arm to _ throw it _at her.

Natasha rolled back away from the now useless cover of the limo door, then rolled again to avoid the Soldier's bionic arm as he leaped down, slamming his metal fist into the pavement with such force it cracked like an egg. Then they were engaged in hand to hand yet again, and Natasha was dismayed to realize that the Soldier's injured shoulder didn't slow him down nearly as much as it should have. As before, they were equally skilled, but he was so physically superior that it was like fighting ten men at once. They danced viciously across the darkened pavement, circling the concrete support columns that ringed the ground floor of the police headquarters until it stood between them and the window walls.

_ What are you _ , Natasha thought frantically. _ Some kind of Super Soldier?! _

The question seemed to answer itself. In one fluid motion, too fast for Natasha to follow, the cyborg assassin kicked her in the chest with such force her sternum shattered, and she flew for ten feet before crashing into the bullet proof glass wall of the headquarters building. Dazed and in pain, she realized she'd accidentally bitten down on a false tooth at the back of her mouth. _ Oh great _. As the coma-inducing toxin poured down her throat she heard a series of sharp cracks split the night air.

Natasha expected to feel bullets slam into her stomach, or metal fingers closing around her throat. When she didn't, she forced herself to look up. The Winter Soldier was ignoring her now, using the concrete support column he'd all but chased her around as cover as the police poured gunfire in his direction.

As the contents of the false tooth carried her off into a dreamless slumber so deep, not even a defibrillator could reverse it, her last thought was a desperate hope that Clint would get to her before she ended up in a body bag.

_ Under the Triskelion, Washington DC, August of 2003 _

Alexander Pierce watched impassively as the Winter Soldier was led back to a restraining chair, where he would be kept sedated for the return trip to Siberia. That bunker was growing increasingly inconvenient, Pierce mused. It would probably have to be abandoned soon in favor of a more practical base of operations for the asset.

Pierce turned to his co-conspirator, Gideon Malick, who had only just been promoted to one of the Heads of HYDRA and was well on his way to joining the World Security Council. "You think Fury's onto us?" he asked.

Malick shrugged. "I don't see how, unless our copy of Phoenix's new communication phone isn't as perfect as we thought. He does have an eye for that sort of thing."

Pierce ignored the pun. "He knew we'd sent the Asset after Senator Grant. How else did Romanoff end up getting in the way? She was listed as being on leave in Florida, but instead she fought the Asset head to head and almost saved the Senator. I wish she'd survived. We could have gotten some useful intel out of her."

"Well, she didn't," Malick said. "But just in case, we should have Fury disposed of, put someone more malleable in his place. He's getting a little too cozy with Phoenix for comfort. And maybe Coulson too."

Pierce shook his head. "Getting rid of both of them at the same time would look too suspicious. We already played this a little too recklessly going after Ross's opposition the way we did." He wanted to argue further that they still needed Nick, but Malick was right about that part. "I'll recall the Asset," he sighed, and moved to speak with the Soldier's handlers.

_ Greenwich Village, Manhattan, August of 2003 _

"And play nice with the other kids," Harry was saying to a slightly pouting Teddy as he brushed nonexistent dust from his shoulders. They were standing outside the daycare Harry had selected for Teddy to attend while he was at work, which was only two blocks away from their house. Teddy wore a vivid Captain America t-shirt and blue shorts (Harry had joked he was betraying the queen by joining "those rebel colonials" when he picked it out that morning), while Harry was clad in a white workout shirt and black sweatpants. Teddy absolutely refused to wear the charmed amulet that concealed his metamorphosing abilities while at home, not that Harry would ever force him to, but it was a necessity while the boy was out and about at this age, when his abilities were still developing.

"I promise I'll play nice," Teddy promised dutifully. It was clear from his expression that he didn't approve of Harry leaving him here, but he needed friends his age, and Harry had put his foot down.

Satisfied, Harry led Teddy through the glass doors and, after speaking with the kindly receptionist, gave Teddy one last hug. "I'll see you later, kiddo," Harry promised. "Love you."

"Love you too, dad," Teddy said, voice muffled slightly as he buried his face in Harry's much broader shoulder. Then they were separating, and Harry watched somewhat forlornly as his son was led deeper into the place. He was due to start American kindergarten in a few weeks.

Shaking his head, Harry bade the secretary a good day and hastened back outside. He half-jogged to the street where he lived, but instead of going home he made for a business. _ Marauder's Oven _, the sign read. Sliding into a back alley, Harry unlocked the employee entrance with a touch and entered, transfiguring his clothes into a baker's uniform as he did so.

As a child he had often been forced to cook for the Dursleys, and while they never admitted as much, he was actually very good at it. However, while Aunt Petunia was happy to make Harry cook all the meals, she seemed to draw a line at him making treats such as biscuits and cakes. She seemed to think that he would enjoy making something sweet and wanted to deny him that, as even back then it was clear he had a bit of a sweet tooth. On learning as much, Hermione and Mrs. Weasley had both insisted on teaching him to bake with and without magic, and it transpired that he had enjoyed it very much. Once he'd taken a trip to New York and come across a bakery owned by the Scamanders that catered to both muggles and magicals by selling confections styled in the shape of various magical beasts, and he'd liked the idea so much that he'd decided to revive it from its grave in the Dark Dimension by creating a similar establishment here, albeit one that was mostly restricted to catering.

Knowing that Harry could not trust regular employees not to question his frequent and sometimes unpredictable trips around the world, the Ancient One had helped him seek out former students of Kamar-Taj who had, for one reason or another, chosen to abandon their training and go back to their normal lives who also happened to be close to Harry's age. As a result, he had a staff of four helping him round the clock, and they often tried good-naturedly to get him to loosen up.

"Hey Harry," called Jason, a handsome college student with a penchant for flirting with every unmarried person he found attractive regardless of gender, who was on opening duty that day. "We've got a big order for a Dragon's Horde on the list today."

"Already?" Harry said with a slight smile. He hadn't been advertising very hard when he first opened, but his signature combination of dragon-themed cookies and cake for birthday parties was gaining rapid popularity by word of mouth. He didn't think he'd have to worry too much about his income if _ Marauder's Oven _ was already doing this well.

A few hours later, a steady line had formed in the middle of the bakery as customers filed in, most waiting to pick up their special orders. As Harry passed a young woman her box gryphon-shaped donuts he overheard snatches of an odd conversation further down the line.

"..Yeah, the way I heard it, that Senator who's been criticizing the war and general Ross was shot at the Houston Police Department," a man was saying to his friend. "Bit convenient, dontcha think? The loudest voice opposing the government's agenda silenced by an assassin's bullet? I thought this was a free country."

Harry kept his face impassive, but internally, he was suddenly very worried, and he had to stamp down on an overreaction from the Phoenix Force. Clearly, he had more enemies than he realized. He restrained an impulse to apparate home and call Nick Fury to discuss this development. He could afford to spend a day getting his elbows covered in flour. Still…

Harry told Jason to take over counter duty, claiming a bathroom break, but he gave the other man a significant look that said a lot more. Jason's expression didn't change beyond a tightening of his eyes, but it was clear he understood.

Harry headed to the back rooms of the bakery, set up a privacy ward, and called the new burner phone he'd given Nick Fury at their meeting weeks earlier.

It rang and rang, but nobody answered. Frowning, Harry called again, and once again he received no answer. This was _ not _ normal.

With a sinking feeling, Harry began to wonder if the looming threat of Kaecilius and his zealots was truly his most immediate problem.


End file.
